Day Away Salon . . . I'll Be Back

I have written before of my dislike for the hair basin at the salon. Nothing good happens there. Today was no exception.

My salonist was doing a wonderful job of massaging my head, helping me relax and NOT think about how awkward it was to lie with my neck in some sort of porcelain urinal while my head hung over a toilet basin. (Sorry for the descriptors there). And it was working wonderfully.

Her hands moved all along my cranium. Back and forth. Really expert-like and professional. It felt heavenly. Too heavenly. And I got to thinking ...

She does this to maybe 20 heads a day. Massaging out all the stress. Rubbing out all the worry. Pushing away anxiety. Person after person melts beneath her expert hands. Twenty people. Twenty heads. Every day.

It was this thought--this realization that my salonist was some sort of head expert that caused me to have a total (yet silent) freak out. Because one who knows heads so intimately, is also able to know their flaws.

And my head, in all its roundness, is flawed. Majorly flawed.

I found it two, maybe three years ago. This robot/Terminator-like bump on my skull. A bump that if John Connor were present, would result with a gun in my face and a surgical team looking for the answer to how I appeared so lifelike. So human.

Now before you disregard my claim and insist I stop blowing things out of proportion, allow me to describe this alien life-form to you. You see, the bump isn't really a bump, as head bumps go, but instead a perfectly round protrusion that is the exact size of, say a screw head. Yes, you heard right. Jutting out from my skull, covered perfectly by skin and hair is a bump that feels and looks like the top of a screw. Making it seem like my head was pieced together by scientists or some factory worker or maybe even Dr. Frankenstein.

After I first found it, I tried my best to imagine what else it could be. A tumor. A cyst. A random accumulation of iron or similar fancy element. But I always came back to the same conclusion. It was a screw and I was probably a robot. Or a Terminator, if that is your preference.

I've kept this to myself, telling only Tad of my strange possible mechanical past, but today, my salonist discovered my secret. As her hands moved back and forth over my head, there is no doubt in my mind that she felt the screw, realized who (or what) I was, and then made the decision that sealed my fate while I sat/reclined in horror.

She said nothing. Absolutely nothing. No reference to Skynet. No fingers digging in the back of my neck. Not even repetitive rubbing right around the location of the screw. Absolutely nothing. Instead, she nonchalantly moved me over to the barber chair as if I was made of flesh and blood. As if I was just like her.

I was speechless. What was there to say?

The tip did the talking for me.