There's a lady who I see in the bathroom at work who covets my hair. On Monday she asked me where I got it cut, and she was shocked when I said that I usually do it myself. I saw her again on Wednesday, and by the time we washed our hands I had somehow agreed to email her a picture of myself so she could try and match my style (at least, I think that's why she wants my picture).

She isn't going to get far if she doesn't know how to cut hair, though. There's a certain finesse to the way I create my do. And so for the lady at work, or for anyone else who is interested in giving their hairstyle that certain "WTF?", I now present the Meg Favreau School of Hair Cuttery:

1. Go three days with hair that is too long. Get angry.
2. When you get home from work, throw down your bag, grab a pair of scissors, and strip to your underwear. Grunt.
3. Looking in the mirror, take a fistful of whatever hair is annoying you the most. Cut it.
4. Try to even the rest of your hair out based on that first chunk.

People say that subways are good places for people watching. I'm going to narrow that down. The subway is a good place for hair watching. Most of the people on the train are boring (except for the one lady who was "swearing on her father's grave" that she'd punch someone on the crowded evening commute train), but their hair is not. I would like to highlight two of my recent favorites for you:

1) A few weeks ago, I get on the subway and there's this man sitting there in a blue suit. He's older looking—maybe 50—and has gone gray. And there's something about him that looks so WRONG. It's hard to pinpoint. He has...bangs. Not sweepy hipster bangs or curly curly-hair-guy bangs, but the sort of straight-line of cut that is now most commonly attributed to Bettie Paige. And these pointy little sideburns...like...holy shit, Mr. Spock! He has a Mr. Spock haircut! Around the time I figure this out, he starts staring at me. I can no longer stare at him, but I know I haven't figured out all of his secrets yet. So I keep taking those turn-head glances that people take when they're trying to look casual, and I finally realize: the grain of the hair. It's all running forward from the back of his head. It's the coup of the century! I believe that I discovered the greatest bald-spot hiding in the history of male vanity. Plus he had a moustache, which I realized was a clever ploy to distract from the head, as if he was like "Hey! Look! Hair here too! Look I'm talking! Look at it move!" and then he hypnotizes you with his subtle moustache play.

2) This morning there was a woman who looked like she was wearing a wig. Her hair sat awkwardly on her head, like a wig would, and it had this sort of otherworldly luster that I associate with plastic, not hair. The more I look, the surer I am it's a wig—but it looks TERRIBLE. It looks like this woman went on a raging bender and somehow ended up in the back room of Macy's where she found, disheveled and covered in dust, a forgotten mannequin from the 1980's, still dressed in a smart green jacket with shoulder pads and gold buttons. The lady cleaned it before putting it on, sure, but left the slightly curling bangs, the odd angle that the sides of the hair stuck out at (designed as if her head was a roof that needed to let the rain easily spill down), the strange flyaway hairs at the top. The lady was also wearing very large glasses and almost missed her stop because she was sleeping, dreaming...ABOUT HER WIG.