Mar 04 2008
Train Spotting: The Unremarkable Man
I noticed him about a week ago. He was unremarkable.
I was on the morning train and he sat near the connecting doors about a dozen rows away facing across and towards me.
Sometimes I doze and sometimes I read on the train. It depends. It depends on how much sleep I got the night before.
I also like to look at the changing landscape outside the window.
The days are getting longer and I miss the slanting shadows cast by winter sunrises and the way the light makes everything stark and brittle and sharply defined.
This unremarkable man was tucked in his seat near the connecting doors. He sat alone. He leaned against the window and his left arm rested along the top of the seat behind him.
It was his arm that caught my eye. As I said, he was unremarkable: a middle-aged man in jeans, polo shirt, and a tan windbreaker. He wore glasses. He was thin. Watchful. He looked like an old crow.
The man had one remarkable thing about him: bad hair. It wasn’t so much that it was bad hair but it was cut in a very unflattering style. It was flyaway sandy brown hair parted to the right and the man would run his fingers through it over and over.
It was chin-length hair cut in a bob. But it was a wispy bob. He kept smoothing his hair with his hand, combing it with his fingers, fussing with it. He played with it as if it were thick and lustrous.
He got off the train a few stations later. He was a thin middle-aged man in jeans, polo shirt and windbreaker wearing a Buster Brown haircut.
If it weren’t for the hair, he’d have faded into the background.
Maybe that’s why he wore it that way.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Most people will fade in the background because they are so nondescript. It was for him to have his hair in such an unusual manor.
People get creative with style and looks just to get that attention. Perhaps, he put so much thought in his hair that he has to make sure its to his liking. Surprised he didn’t have a mirror to check it every few minutes.
It is, of course, possible that he spent loads and loads of money to make sure his hair looked really bad on purpose, like the people on MTV do. As a fashion statement, it appears to have worked on you.
UT: His style wasn’t all that creative or even a precision type of cut. I got the sense that for whatever reason, his hair was some type of fixation for him. Maybe he had chemo or he didn’t want to admit he was aging and it reminded him of his youth.
I know I shouldn’t be wanting to “fix” people but I thought he’d look more interesting if he got different glasses and pulled all that hair into a ponytail. Wouldn’t take much. The off-to-the-side bangs made him look older I thought. It made him look older due to the incongruity of the cut.
the frogster: I don’t think he spent loads of money on his hair. But what do I know. I spent loads of money on my haircut just so I don’t have to fuss with it. Not that loads of money means you’ll get a good haircut! I once spent loads (to me) and dang, it was a bad haircut.
I noticed him because of his hair but I tend to observe people and wonder why they do the things they do. In his case he seemed obsessed with his hair but more like obsessive-compulsive.
The guy didn’t have a dog with him, did he? Maybe a dog who looked like his name was Tige?
delmer: no dog. He probably shouldn’t have a dog – he wouldn’t have time for it, he would be too busy petting and stroking his head of hair.
MsQ!!!!
I read this on my travels – via cell phone. I laughed because many weeks I do not look exactly “Daper Dan”.
…. Hair??? I used to care about it, sometimes now I go just a bit too long before a cut. Add some extra “beard”, and all of a sudden I look a bit Grizzly Adams!
Years ago, I was in sales and wore a suit every day. I liked the look – hated the tie. First thing after work the tie came off …. I HAD to have a decent trim then – not so much now.
All I know is, I DO NOT want to look like Buster Brown. Too funny!