(From about 2 months ago)

Today, I am sad…

I am sad, not for myself; well, kind of for myself, but for myself only in a collateral way.
Let me get to the point: today I discovered that the man with the SINGLE GREATEST TOUPEE IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD was let go from my company.

He was a genial fellow, he seemed smart and hard-working, but for whatever reason, he haunts our hallways no more.

The greatest thing about his hairpiece was the way it revealed his innermost self. It was a sort of dirty blonde, hardly uncommon among Americans, and it sort of swept across the crown of his head in the “parted on the side” generic short haircut favored by men throughout the world.

The problem was, his natural hair had become closer and closer to dirty gray than dirty blonde, and the mismatch between the two colors and textures made his toupee pop off his head and into your visual field as if it were a live squirrel. I often found myself making unnecessary trips to the printer just to circle around an area I had seen him standing in, sneaking glance after glance, but never getting any closer to an understanding of how, exactly, this man’s toupee fit into his view of himself, and by extension, the world.

So let’s be sad, for this man who lost his job, but also for the rest of us who are deprived of the surreal magic that his hairpiece sprinkled around our mundane hallways like unicorn elf-pixie happy dust.