The Great Migration of the Long Hair

I have a question for women with long hair.

How does it get THERE?

You know where I mean.

And I’m fairly certain most women reading this have just nodded.

This happened to me again recently. One minute I’m wandering around the house perfectly happily, the next there’s that unmistakable little tickle that tells you one of your hairs has somehow completed a journey that shouldn’t be physically possible.

And there it is.

One of mine.

A really long one.

Now, I’m not particularly concerned about finding the hair. I’ve had long hair for years. Finding my own hair in peculiar places is basically part of the maintenance agreement.

What bothers me is the logistics.

It started up here.

It ended up down there.

There is quite a lot of Eira in between.

At what point did it make the journey?

I genuinely want to know.

The shower is obviously suspect number one.

Anyone with long hair knows that washing it involves losing enough strands to make you briefly wonder whether you’re going bald, before looking in the mirror and discovering you’ve still got enough hair to carpet a small bungalow.

Then there’s the towel.

Possibly the bed.

Clothes would ordinarily be implicated too, except I’m a naturist, which rather ruins that theory.

This is where the mystery deepens.

If I’ve spent half the day happily wandering around without clothes on, how has a hair managed to travel from the top of me to somewhere considerably further south without me noticing?

Gravity?

Wind?

Static?

Did it fall onto the sofa first and wait for me to sit down?

I’m beginning to think they move independently.

Perhaps that’s what happens to all the hairs we lose.

We assume they’ve fallen out.

Actually they’re travelling.

I’ve started imagining tiny nature-documentary music.

Every year, thousands of Eira’s hairs leave the safety of the scalp and begin their perilous migration south…

Some make it only as far as the shoulders.

Others are discovered on the bathroom floor.

A particularly adventurous few reach territories nobody quite understands.

And it isn’t just there, is it?

Long-haired women find their hair

EVERYWHERE.

In the bed.

In the washing.

Wrapped around the Hoover.

Inside clothes you haven’t worn for three days.

On somebody else.

That last one is particularly good.

“Why have you got one of my hairs on you?”

Suddenly you’re conducting a forensic investigation despite the obvious answer being that your hair has colonised approximately 70% of the house.

I’ve even found one in the fridge.

The fridge!

Explain that.

Perhaps this is another strangely wonderful thing about being comfortable without clothes.

You notice the completely ordinary silliness of having a human body.

Not the polished version we’re supposed to present to the world.

The actual version.

The one that sheds hair, gets goosebumps, develops random bruises and occasionally makes you stop whatever you’re doing because something is tickling somewhere and you need to work out what on earth it is.

So I’ve stopped being surprised when I find one.

Mostly.

But I still want to know how they travel.

Because I’m convinced there’s a point during every long hair’s life when it thinks:

“Right. I’ve finished being hair now. Time for an adventure.”

Please tell me this isn’t just me.

Ladies with long hair: what’s the most completely inexplicable place you’ve ever found one of yours?