Tuesday, August 01, 2006

I Want it Back

six weeks.

I just looked at the calender, and that's how long my hairclip has been missing. I know what you're thinking: any "normal" woman would have put that clip far behind her by now. The fact that I continue to peer under couches and rifle through drawers where I have already looked dozens of times does not speak highly of my sanity. But I can't help it. For a woman to attach this much importance to an object, I'm sure you're thinking it has sentimental value... and I suppose I could derive some out of it if I must, but that's not what bothers me. My need for this object is practical.


I paid thirty dollars for it, which I'm sure you're thinking is highway robbery for some kind of barrette with no actual jewels in it, but I tell you I would pay it again and again... if only I could find the vendor. I bought it at a stand somewhere in downtown Boston, the day of the parade (October 30, 2004.) It came with a lifetime warranty but I promptly lost all information that had come with it, including brand name. Friends have returned to the location for me to no avail. I don't know how to get another one.

I am desperate to find this hairclip, or another one like it in short order. It is, in fact, the only thing I have ever found that effectively holds my hair up. My mother, knowing this, found some in the same design for me for Christmas. A lovely thought, and I now resort to using them on occasion, but because they are made of plastic they are too flimsy to hold onto my hair for more than five minutes at a time. The metal teeth and spring were both essential to the strength of this clip. I found one in Lincoln, NH this weekend of similar style and made of metal... but it's fancy. And it doesn't manipulate easily.I can wear it sometimes but not - like the beloved red one - EVERY DAY.

I keep thinking it will turn up. I keep trying to go over in my head the last times I used it, to think of where I might have left it. Is it rude to ask a friend AGAIN six weeks later "are you SURE you don't have my hairclip?" Yeah, I guess that would imply foul play or something. Not that I think anyone would steal it (unless, of course, they figured out how god-damned awesome it was) but perhaps some people might not realize how CRAZY I am about it?

Get over it? yeah, easy for you to say... you whose hair is not long enough to find use for such an object, or who prefers a ponytail, or who just was never priveleged enough to get used to such a clip... and you, over there without hair at all, yeah YOU... laugh it up. After all, there's gotta be some benefit to baldness.