the strand of hair

12/29/07

It was a bash, two days before the New Year’s eve, and yes, it was a celebration indeed, but done in advance, and my mother’s friends decided to do it in our house. They brought variety of victuals and viands, and started the fun with eating sessions. The smorgasbord was full of palatable dishes and I do not want to miss the chance to taste them all.
Sitting at the couch on our living room after getting my share, and reveling on the feast of taste, while swigging and salivating on a glass of soda, I turned on the TV to watch, browsing for channels that offers nonsense shows.
‘Oh my God!’ I heard one of my friend who already joined me at the opposite couch, who was a daughter of my mother’s friend, screamed while scrutinizing her plate like a gynecologist, with her fork as a scalpel and the spoon as a spatula.
‘What? What’s your problem?’ I asked instantly.
‘Look at this, on my plate!’
There she was eating a plate of adobo, embutido, and seafood Pancit Malabon, topped with crunchy, cracked chicharon, mussels, shrimps, sliced hard-boiled eggs and a copious quantity of brown garlic.
‘What? What’s in there?’
‘A hair!’
‘A hair?
‘Yes! A hair, and it’s not an ordinary hair.’
For as long as I know, a female shed off hair strands from her head more than a male and that is the reason why every meal your mother might prepared have hair strands as an extra ingredient. But I think it’s disgusting to find a hair strand when you bought the food, and you found it unclean, right?
‘Well, its alright, you probably are not alone to encounter a strand of hair in the plate you are eating.’
‘It was…It was a pubic hair!’
‘What? A cubic hair?’ I replied to her and replaced the word I heard from her that I think my mind had just only fabricated.
‘Look at my plate, a pubic hair.’
Thank goodness, I heard it right, and on what she had said, I found my self quite reluctant to take her proposition, but my curiosity is stronger that I dared look at it. On her plate, she pointed a strand of hair-it was kinky, and jet-black; it was flanked by a cartilage of a half-eaten chicken breast and a foil scrap of embutido.
‘I think it’s not. How sure are you?’
‘Yes, it was! And it’s disgusting! I want to puke out what I’ve eaten. I need an emetic!’
I think she was exaggerating it, and isn’t it too gross to find out a hair strand coming from someone’s crotch on the food you are eating?
This friend of mine, with her stomach starting to flurry, hurriedly ascended to the stairs leading to the rooftop where the celebration is happening. I didn’t follow her, and I left my meal unfinished, reckoning the possibilities that it could be what she says, or it could be not. I haven’t a clue.
She then descended as fast as she can, with another set of different meal and I asked her. ‘Did they react violently? What did they say?’
‘Curse them, they don’t believe me!’
‘Why then?’
‘They say it some kind of came from the mussels, you know, and they insist.’
‘Oh, so I see…the hair is not what you think it is.’
‘Oh, whatever! Look at the strand of hair, I don’t think it really came from a mussel meat. I know its dirty! ’
‘Okay, no one questions you here, just eat.’ I concluded her litany and increased the volume of the TV.

Now I remember. My teeth used to be meshed with those kinky hairs of cooked, stewed fresh mussels. These species of mollusks were harvested on submerged bamboo poles on the sea and they proliferate fast, I wonder how they mate.
And I really wonder how people think- how they react, how they seem so naïve and innocuous in some situations, or, are they only just showing some blatant hypocrisy or just faking it? Like those conservative and conformist parents who will put their sweaty hands on their children’s faces if they are watching a TV show or a movie, when a stimulating yet disturbing scene initiates. Like those people who make another meaning on words or even circumstances that they encounter, assuming things as double-entendre. Like those insecure cranks who are misjudging other people by their sentiments, ways of living, convictions and mannerisms.
I can’t blame them, so are our eyes- who are proven to fluctuate images they see, giving us two or possible figures that they have analyzed. Well, sometimes, my eyes dupe me, and I can be easily deceived by veneers and appearances, the outer wrapping. And I am certainly sure that the majority of world’s populace experiences the same. But effortlessly, we can avoid such things to happen. Do you know how it is done? It is simple, just dive and go explore beyond the surface.