Confucius Smells a Rat

On a morning from a Bogart movie
In a country where they turn back time
You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre Contemplating a crime
She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running
Like a watercolour in the rain
Don't bother asking for explanations
She'll just tell you that she came
In the year of the cat.

She doesn't give you time for questions
As she locks up your arm in hers
And you follow 'till your sense of which direction
Completely disappears
By the blue tiled walls near the market stalls
There's a hidden door she leads you to
These days, she says, I feel my life
Just like a river running through
The year of the cat

Al Stewart, "The Year of the Cat"



Well....more like the year of the rat, I think. You know how every year is a different symbol in the Chinese calender? Some years are pigs, cats, maybe even poodles (maybe those are more like delicacies??)....surely this is the rat year. Does anyone know? Here's what I think. Something is going on with my hair. You can spread rumors behind my back - doesn't bother me. You can talk smack about my Mother (she can take care of herself, so I would seriously reconsider if I were you - she comes armed with a pool cue!). Please, however, do not mess with my hair! I haven't had any in quite some time, after all. Just when I was finally growing some in - and just when the bald spot on the back of my crown (that made me look like a monk...alms for the poor?), had finally almost completely grown in, a new problem developed.

My doctor explained it to me this way...some cancer/chemo patients regain their hair just as it was when they lost it. Some patients have hair that comes back completely opposite in color or texture - jet black or ultra curly hair is very common in this category, even if you were a stick-straight blond prior to cancer. Very rarely though, there is a strange mutation of hair that a patient will grow. Very rarely there is an odd phenomenon. Very rarely...well, you get the picture. My hair is growing at an astounding rate. My step-son literally cannot believe how much hair I have today in comparison to last week. My doctor, however, told me that the ultra- professional, uber-technical term for the color of my new hair is.....(drumroll)......RODENT!!! Yes, I am one of those very few isolated cases where a patient re-grows hair that isn't quite brown, isn't quite blond, isn't quite gray.....it's the color of a big, fat, rat. It also looks very "dusty" like someone sat me in the corner for 6 months and forgot to wipe me off!
It is mortifying. I do not like it! I feel like a female Master-Splinter off of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Picture me with a cane and a nasty brown robe saying,"Raphael, Michelangelo...We must stop Shredder!" Imagine me as Templeton from Charlotte's Web telling Charlotte and that Goose how to score food at the fair. Didn't Michael Jackson sing a song about a rat named Ben at one point in time? There is no such thing as a cute rat, anyway. That's all I know. At any rate, it isn't good news. They also say that I can try to color it, but I can't use a strong hair color, only one that washes out. Oh, yeah...and they tell me it probably won't take the hair color very well. I am doomed, I'm afraid. The next time you see me, I may be doing commercials for Activia yogurt (al a Jamie Lee Curtis). Maybe I can audition for one of those emergency device commercials (I will practice saying "I've fallen and I can't get up" in various accents). Wait! Didn't George Eat Old Gray Rat At Phillips House Yesterday????? No....that's just the way my Mother taught me to spell geography. Woe is me! Wish me well & thank you for reading this edition of Rat Tales!