Like Steve Martin

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 16, Verse 31

"White hair is a crown of glory and is seen among the godly."

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CHIPPED WISDOM:

My great aunt was a ball buster.  She organized her own funeral, right down to the type of roses she wanted placed onto her coffin by her mourners.  

Steel cut.  Get it right.  

She wrote her own eulogy.  The only thing she didn't do was read it herself.  And I'm surprised she didn't.  

Her mother was a ball buster, too.  When we put her in a home, she ran away.  We put her in another one, and she ran away from that one, too.  And she stopped speaking.  She didn't lose her ability to speak, she just, you know, stopped.  

My great aunt went completely white at age 19, like Steve Martin, and, when I heard that, at age seven or eight, I prayed it would happen to me, too.  I wanted prematurely white hair so badly I could taste it.  I could taste the, you know... white... hair.  In my mouth.

Mmmm......

I wanted it.  Give it to me, I begged the Follicle God.  Give it to me GOOD.

And, in a small way, I got it.  At maybe twelve, I got two white hairs.  

(I inspected my hair in the mirror every single morning.  It took a while to get ready for school.)

Now, maybe, in retrospect, these hairs were blonde or whatever-- just bereft of enough pigment to make brown, but, to me, they were white.  WHITE!  The absence of color!  I was overjoyed.  

This is it, I thought, this is the beginning of my pubescent graying... or... whiting.  My premature maturing.  At only 12 years old!  I was WAY ahead of schedule, I was leaving my great aunt in the dust!  

Alas, it was not to be.  At nearly 33, I've got more than two white hairs, to be sure, but I have a very long way to go before I go completely white or gray or whatever the hell my head is going to do.  And, to this day: I'm pissed.

Looking back, I don't think I liked being a child very much.  Sure, you can play at make believe and that's nice, but once I discovered theatre, I realized you could be a serious-looking adult AND play at make believe (and people would CLAP for you and say nice things to you afterwards!) then THAT was what I really wanted.  I wanted to spend time in the office supply store sitting in oxblood leather chairs and playing with "PAID IN FULL" ink stamps and talk to nuns in the supermarket and write about airplane disasters and the Irish Republican Army and I didn't want to be in middle school while I was doing it.

I wanted to have gray hair.  

White hair gives you authority.  It lets people know you've been around, you are to be taken seriously, you are to be heard.  A white haired person doesn't read a story to his mother in the living with an impassioned voice only to hear stunted silence at the end punctuated only by a dry, "That's very nice, Gabriel."

I'm still waiting to be taken seriously.  By you.  By me.  I look in the mirror and I see a brown-haired joke.  Immature.  Naive.  Struggling for every cent in the bank.  Overeducated and underqualified.  Still so very young.  

When I'm in a show, when I play at make believe, I typically am portraying somebody who is at least in their fifties, and usually a lot older than that.  It's been that way since middle school, and I suppose that's no accident.  That's who I want to be.  So I sit in front of a make-up artist, smelling her breath and trying not to stare at her breasts as she leans into me in that way that make-up artists un-self-consciously can bring themselves to do because, let's face it, most male actors are gay anyway, and I sit patiently while they work their magic on my still-young face.  Lines and shadows, everywhere-- along the nose, on the chin, crease the forehead, furrow the brow, draw on the neck, crinkle the eyes.  And whiten that hair.  

That's how I play at make believe.  

I wasn't very good at being a kid.  When I sing nursery rhymes to my children, I always end up making up half of the song because I don't know them.  

"Three blind mice,

Three blind mice,

See how they run,

See how they run,

They all got up on's the farmer's wife,

She cut of their heads with a carving knife,

Did you ever see such a sight in your life

As three blind mice?"

I mean, that's probably close.  My wife corrected an earlier version of this song where I sang about the three blind mice running up the clock.  

"That's Hickory Dickory Dock," she said disapprovingly.

Whatever.  I sing them patter songs and Canadian maritime shanties.  That'll put white hair on their chests. 

It'll happen when I'm fifty or sixty.  I'l have what I've wanted since I was a boy, and I suppose I won't know what to do with it when I get it.  Like the antique Volkswagen Beetle I'll get once I'm white-haired.  What will I do with it?  Polish it?  Drive it gingerly around the block twice a year?  Be afraid of it?  

I'll be afraid of the white hair, too, because it will foretell death, which is something I'm not too excited about.  I won't be able to enjoy it once I get it.  Sure, I'll finally look serious enough to grow the big, Civil War-era walrus-style mustache flowing down to my chin that I've always wanted once my hair is white, but I'll probably be a disorganized, impotent wreck wandering around K-Mart with my fly undone and my mouth agape sniffing the life-size Martha Stewart cut-out display.  But maybe then I'll be happy, silver-tressed in my coffin-- it'll be a sight to see.  Just don't bring me steel cut roses.  Or I'll cut off your head with a carving knife while you run up the goddamned clock.