Hairpiece Experience

In a previous post (Lawn Distraction) I shared about hair loss and Rogaine. In one of the comments I said I would soon share about wearing a hairpiece; so here goes:

From the age of 20 to 23, I wore a hairpiece, (three and a half years). Actually I ended up buying two of them.

First of all you need to realize that the raw material (human hair) used for wigs and hairpieces is best if it is not sun or environment damaged. With this need for undamaged hair, most hair used in this process is made out of hair from Asia. Culturally untanned skin and unbleached hair is in style. Only the unsophisticated would allow themselves to be exposed to the sun.

The reason I tell you the above is my first hairpiece was made out of thick straight black Asian hair died blond, parted on one side. It made me look like the Elf that wanted to be a dentist in the "Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer" TV special.

During this time if a woman looked at me I couldn't tell if she was flirting with me or if she was looking at my "piece".

I had many unique experiences then I wore them but three stand out:

*Church basketball League - one night as I was dribbling the ball across the top of the key the defender took a swat at the ball and missed. Basically I was going east and my hair was going west.

The other players couldn't figure out what was on the court and kicked it to the sidelines. I ran over and picked it up and threw it into my nearby coat and went back to playing ball like nothing had happened. The ref called a jump ball because they couldn't figure out what happened. I soon became an outside shooter.

*Basketball again - I was playing hoops in the culdesac in front of my Seattle cousins house. Three of the four clips that attached the piece to my natural hair came loose. It dangled from one clip off the side of my head.

My cousins and their neighbors laughed so hard, we had to stop playing for the day.

*Cleaning "the piece" - Even though my first one cost approximately $600 and my second one was closer to $800, I was too cheap to buy one of those Styrofoam heads to store and/or dry it with. I would store and dry my hair over a soccer ball.

Unlike natural hair you don't wash your hair every time you take a shower. You treat it more like a hat and wash it every two to four weeks. It was a royal pain to carefully wash and dry this thing and then put it on a round shape to dry. One time my girlfriend, who lived with her parents, gave me wig shampoo.

Using this shampoo I wasn't as careful as I was with regular shampoo. When I went to dry it I couldn't get a snarl out of the middle of the part. With normal hair your last resort is to cut out the snarl, with a hairpiece you can't cut it out, it won't grow back. I struggled for hours trying to get out the mess in my part. At 3 AM I finally went to bed.

The next morning I called in sick to work, saying "I hadn't slept well". Telling the total truth by calling in with a "bad hair day" excuse would not have worked.

About an hour later I got the snarl out and went into work mid-morning. I just told everyone I came in because I felt better.

With my girlfriends urging I soon stopped wearing my hairpiece. Looking back I unfortunately let her marry someone else.

I still have both hairpieces in a drawer, one looks like a sleeping small dog and the other keeps my rarely used soccer ball warm. I sued to be able to wear them for Halloween but the longer haired styles of the early eighties makes them not blend in with my short hair