PTSD in the produce department

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Image result for curly parsleyYesterday it happened in the produce section. I was squeezing a cantaloupe thinking “Harry would like this” and as I caressed the thing it occurred to me it felt like my puckered bald scalp. I put the cantaloupe in the grocery basket making a mental note to ask Harry to cut it. Then the curly parsley caught my eye just as the mist sprayer came on like a fire hose. I bolted for the crackers and biscuits aisle. Thank goodness Lynnie Oren came along. She was wearing the tam I knit with old Dozer’s fur twisted in the yarn.

“Let’s go down to Coated. I want to show you a jacket to match Dozer’s hat,” she said

We were at the end of the mall before I had time to back out. The end of the mall is where the hair salon is, and Coated is next door. The whole place was filled with that smell – the smell of hot hair. Lynnie was gabbing on and on and, yes, I agreed the coat and tam were a perfect pairing, and not for the first time I noticed she had earlobes like Dozer her dead Spaniel. She bought the coat then Lynnie left me standing outside of “Shafts Salon” inhaling the smell of blow-dried hair.

Sometimes I think I can still feel hair on my head, especially when I smell blow dried hair. I feel the pull of the brush through the strands, the hot air swishing from shaft to end making it as smooth as melamine for Harry to run his nubby fingers through. Now he massages my head nightly, rubbing olive oil into my scalp. I feel like a tossed salad.

“The customers like the way your head glows, Vee. It’s the oddity, like a Mexican Hairless dog.”

“If everyone owned hairless dogs we’d be broke, Harry.”

You can see why I don’t like shopping and why I’m not a vegetarian.

 

9 thoughts on “PTSD in the produce department”

  4. I hate when that supermarket mist sprayer comes on and wets all the greens so you can’t possibly store them without going through extensive drying maneuvers to insure they won’t go slimy if you have to keep them for more than a day.

    I had a cousin whose chemo treatments made her bald, and I always got a kick out of the fact that she refused all the camouflage of wigs and turbans….and made jokes about resembling “Mr. Clean,” the bald guy who was featured on that commercial cleaning agent.

    Vee has the conundrum of fighting the belief—in herself and in others—that a woman’s hair is her crowning glory. Men don’t have that, so much. In fact, some people think bald, in a man, is sexy.
    (Then there is the problem of naturally curly hair, which the beauticians of most salons have no idea how to treat. For us curlies, blow drying is frying, and an invention from hell.)

    I can indeed see why Vee does not like shopping, and is not a vegetarian.

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    • My niece is going through chemo right now and has undergone radiation “therapy” and chemo on and off for two years. So far she has kept her hair and is happy that some portion of her life is unchanged. I don’t know what I’d do under the circumstances but I do occasionally fantasize about cutting off all my hair down to the nubs like my husband does thereby saving thousands of dollars in management costs.

      The damn mister, eh? I always seem to be reaching for something just as it comes on and go home from the grocery store with soaked cuffs.

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