How Hairlines Recede

Since the time I could think, I have been a computer programmer. Having the name of Tellus, I am burdened with the mountains of workloads assigned to that name. However, I have always had pride in myself for how I cope with this job. Just look at my neighbors: Mars, whose humor is as dry as the two tiny patches of white hair by the sides of his head. And Venus, whose addiction to smoke creates a constant ring of fog around her. 

 I’m different. Because of how welcoming and habitable my white hair is, all the tiny animals are attracted to it. More specifically, micro-polar bears and mini-Arctic foxes enjoy the coolness of my hair. Little spheres of snowy owls are also regular visitors to my slightly yellowish patches, and many seals like to give birth on my hair. They are what give me hope and condolences as I carry on working twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. In the midst of everything, I know that I will always have these sweet darlings to keep me company. Which is why despite having to cope with this job and a demanding boss, my top priority will always be to preserve my hair.   

Yes, you assume that correctly. Me, the most resilient and enduring worker of the Universe, is losing my hair! My shining strands of white hair are falling like snow, breaking down, and dissipating. 

This catastrophe did not happen overnight. One morning, as I turned myself away from the bed and toward the computer, I received a new task of coding more fossil fuels for my boss. The screen was dark when I looked at my own reflection. In fact, it was so dark that I couldn’t find my hairline! There had to be some mistake, I thought as I looked at my gleaming forehead, my hands erratically scrambling around in search of my hair. It would be just a matter of time before the  polar bears fell off my head like hail, I thought. 

Finally, four inches away from my eyebrows, my fingers caught a batch of straw-like hair. I ran my hands through it and lowered them with so much relief, so much gratitude—-but then I noticed the locks of hair entangled between my fingers. That. Also. Came. Down. With. My. Fingers. 

My hairline has risen so much since that first time scrutinizing over myself in the mirror. Now, every ten days, I lose over one-tenth of my hair! I know that stress is what has caused it…but how can I stop? It’s like my hands aren’t even mine to control; they move by their own volition to type out codes. I program the codes for Uranium, natural gas, and coal, while listening to the whines of the polar bears as their babies are forced to be shipped to boarding schools just because they are standing on one of my drifting patches of hair. I’m petrified as I slowly turn from a newly-graduated computer scientist to one of those experienced professionals whose hairlines rise like sea levels. I shouldn’t be aging this fast.

With horror, I realize that I am also burning up. It is not as much of a hindrance to my work as I thought it would be, however, I have asked one of my mini-seals living in my sideburns about how she feels. It’s like having a sauna, she says excitedly, tail wiggling and sweeping on my scalp. She is gone from my head just a few days later. When I ask the polar bears about her, they respond sadly by saying that the sauna is too hot and that the seal has migrated.

I have to do something. In fact, I do. I send an email to my boss titled “Rising Hairline Level Endangering Species!!!” along with the pictures I recently took of my hair. It is painful to admit that I need help. Afterwards, I wait and continue to do the work assigned to me. 

I wait and wait and wait. 

One of the snow hares falls off my head and zooms right past my nostrils, making me sneeze. I feel slightly dizzy from sitting dawn to dusk in front of this computer, without air conditioning. Imagine the relief that washes over me when a  familiar “ding” sounds from the emails; I have received a response from my boss. 

You look exactly the same as before, it says. Your hair is perfectly fine. It’s all psychological, from all the hints you give yourself. Try doing some yoga and recycle your energy, that might help. 

Along with the email comes a knocking from my computer desk drawer. I open it gingerly to discover a bottle of shampoo. “100% Green,” it reads: “organic with carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide.” Most importantly and proudly displayed at the bottom: Hair Growth Product. 

The savior has arrived! The solution to all my problems and the help that I’ve always needed! My hands tremble like erupting volcanoes as I try my best to see through the cascade of white hair falling off my head. Snap, the bottle opens. I pour the whole product over my head thoroughly and wait again. 

Then I feel it take effect. 

Do you know that when a glacier collapses, it’s not because some godly being rammed a hammer into its head? The breaking of an iceberg takes time. Hundreds and hundreds of cracks accumulate over months from the heat. They run through the entire glacier and undermine it from the very core, to the point when you will only need one small pressure, one more straw, one more joule of energy to break it. When it does break, it folds onto itself and shifts and sinks down, down into the ocean and far, far away from where it’s supposed to be. What’s there gets buried, and what’s left gets carried away. 

My hair is a collapsing glacier. It crumbles. It dies. So do all the animals along with it. Every single one of them, gone. 

Maybe…just maybe, I will start a strike one day and stop coding for them. It’s terrifying to be fired but it’s empowering to quit. 

Reflection:

Our relationship with the Earth is not unlike one between an ignorant boss and an over-worked employee, except that the Earth would never get a sufficient payment from us. In my piece of writing, I used allegory, avant-garde, and irony to show how Earth, now literally personified, is being abused by this unhealthy work relationship and seeking help. 

This idea came to me one day when I ran my hand through my hair and, with horror, saw many strands fall. I thought: “Isn’t how glaciers fracture similar to how hair falls? Isn’t how hairlines rise similar to how the sea level rises?” One can certainly imagine Earth as a human, but a programmer going bald, with Arctic animals living in his hair? This is where I used the avant-garde element of this competition. We humans keep taking natural resources and demand that the Earth give us fossil fuels and natural gas in return, but we don’t realize how the toll of that job gives the Earth stress; we never understand how much of the Earth’s glacier–allegorized as its hair–is being lost, consequently harming marine animals. 

Toward the end of the story, the narrator Tellus, whose name means Earth in Latin, finally sends a warning sign to his boss, the humans. What does he get in return? A reply full of denial and a supposed hair-growth product that might (but probably won’t) solve his problems. Just like how some people in reality have chosen to deny rising sea levels, the boss in this story continues to cause Earth harm. The situational irony here is that while the reader knows a product full of greenhouse gasses is certainly not going to help preserve glaciers, the Earth itself doesn’t. By hanging on to this “last hope,” the Earth uses all of the product and ends up losing all his “hair,” destroying the ecosystem.

I ended the story on a slightly darker note because my focus is not on the possible  positivity of the whole event, but rather on its ridiculousness. I want the readers to realize the harm that we are bringing to the Earth, and that if we don’t stop, the Earth will give up on working for us one day…When all the ecosystems are destroyed, where will we be?

Works Cited:

"Arctic Sea Ice Extent." NASA.gov, Earth Science Communications Team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/arctic-sea-ice/. Accessed 12 June 2022.

Mosher, Dave. "Baby Harp Seals Being Drowned, Crushed amid Melting Ice." National Geographic, 6 Jan. 2012, www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/120106-harp-seals-global-warming-sea-ice-science environment#:~:text=Harp%20seal%20pups%20are%20taking,first%20vulnerable%20weeks%20of%20life. Accessed 12 June 2022.