harlin's hair tonic

Most people know Ockham's Razor, most succinctly summed up as "the simplest explanation is usually the best." Apparently throughout history, there have been many people who have attempted to create anti-razors. None have been very successful as far as PR campaigns for their anti-razors have gone because no one really knows them.

The reason I bring this up is that I found myself thinking this morning of how I seem to live by my own anti-razor, though I didn't have a very good name for it (as evidenced by the title of this post). For me, "whatever is the scariest, most horrifying possibility is probably the one that's occurring at that moment, whether that's actually true or not." That's what I seem to believe.

Take this morning for instance:

Thursday is my 29th birthday. I've started to look in the mirror and think "is this it for me? is the boulder of Age just going to start rolling down hill from here?" I see people my own age around me at work who are going gray or getting wrinkles. I've been losing my hair for years, though it seems to have plateaued of late.

Anyway, this morning I was brushing my teeth. I leaned over the sink to spit out my mouthful of toothpaste and I stopped dead in my tracks.

There, right next to my ear, was a big white hair.

Now, I don't know why it happens, but hopefully I'm not the only mutant on Earth who occasionally finds some sort of crazy, over-achieving hair that seems to be about 3 times longer than any other hair on my head/arm/whatever. Anyway, I stared at it and thought "Holy Crap ... here I am, two days left of being 28 and I've already started to have my hair go white ... And look at that thing! It really worked over time last night!!"

Frowning, I reached out a scared finger to poke at it. Instantly, it fell off of my head and I realized I simply had a piece of cat hair stuck to me.

Whatever is the scariest, most horrifying possibility is probably the one that's occurring at that moment, whether that's actually true or not.