I think I've posted this before:

But I keep on stumbling across it.

Old assignment from high school:

Vignette: Fuzz


My family’s hair is all different. My mum started going grey when I was born. Scotty has greasy boy hair. My hair was stick-straight brown until one day, bam, it curled up away from me. Eli had the prettiest hair, especially for a boy, browns and reds and golds, and a funny patch of white on the top of his head. We used to joke about it, about how he was dropped on his head, there, when he was a baby. Then he came home, mom in tow, with his hair dyed, a uniform shade of brown we forget easily.

My dad has duck fluff. An undefined color, grey and black and white and blue, and his scalp shines through the fluff, like the downy pale of the chicks you hatch in kindergarten. Down that barely keeps his head warm and always makes him feel like he needs a haircut, running his hands over his head and expecting something to get tangled in.

I suppose that if someone were to cut off all my hair, and it would never grow back again, that I would remember what it felt like to brush it out of my face, long after everyone else forgot what color it was. Was it red? Black? they would ask as I’d walk by, head round and shiny, feeling tenfold what the weather was, having the rain drip right down the back of my shirt, with no hair to stop it from curving down my head. I barely remember my dad with his thick hair. It would disappear each round, and grow back each time, until one time it didn’t. It just stayed fluffy.

There is a picture on our fridge, of my dad when he had hair, right about the ice-maker. It is small, about the size of a postage stamp. His face is caught, surprised by the glare of the flash. I wonder if the man in the picture knows the man outside, with the fuzz. I imagine the photo’s face changing for my dad, in instant recognition, breaking into a smile when my dad goes to get a drinking, and ask him who does his hair.