SUNDAY PAPER
All of the ads that sell a hair transplant, it seems, are in the back of Sunday supplements. I remember a few years ago thumbing through the Sunday paper at the doctor’s office and being totally unable to believe how many different ads there were in the magazine section, just before all the summer camp ads and just after all the “Send us $20 and we’ll send you a book on how to make a million” ads. There must have been at least fifty. “Revitalize your scalp,” said one. “We’ll make a new man out of you!” And then I think another one claimed that you’ll look 30 years younger when you try our new product. It said that your hair will grow back within days. That was when I noticed that the Girl Scout camp I had gone to had a new director. It wasn’t Jeanne anymore. It was the same camp but with a different person’s name in the ad. I wondered what had happened to Jeanne and some of those girls whom I never saw again after the two summers I went to the camp, up in the north woods of Wisconsin. That’s why I remember all those hair removal and hair growth ads. Forgive me for being sentimental, but sometimes—when I have nothing else to do—I think about my childhood and wonder what happened to all those strange people.