“Mornin’ Ram,” greeted Walt as Ram ambled up to their bench. It was a rare occasion on which Ram actually arrived at their communal location after Walt. “What kept you?”
“Age,” was Ram’s reply.
“Age?” queried Walt. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Just seems to take me longer and longer to get up in mornings and get things arranged. Can’t attribute it to anything else.”
“Maybe you should just get up a bit earlier,” chided Walt, playfully.
“Hell with that,” was the terse reply. “After getting up three or four times during the night to whiz, I deserve to sleep in a bit.
“Well, I see you’ve got a different cane today. Guess you’re waiting for me to ask about it,” said Ram with feigned petulance.
“Tigerwood,” replied Walt. “Native to Brazil. Very dense and hardy. Sometimes used as flooring.”
“Very nice,” said Ram, admiring the dark streaks that ran down the length of the reddish-brown shaft.
The two sat quietly for a few moments just admiring the new day and the early morning freshness emanating from the dewy grass.
“Know what I hate, Walt?” suddenly injected Ram.
“Knowing you as I do,” said Walt, “I expect you hate a lot of things. But I guess there’s something special you’d like to tell me about today.”
Ram continued the badinage. “Banana strings.”
“Banana strings?” Walt was perplexed.
“Yeah. You know how when you peel a banana and it seems to be just right and ready for a healthy bite and there’s a little “thingy” sticking off at the end and it’s a banana string and you pull it off because it’s kinda icky and then you take a bite of banana and realize that there’s another one and you got it caught on your lip and it’s hanging down onto your chin and you have to stop eating and try to remove it? Yuuuch. Hate those things. Take all the pleasure out of eating a banana.”
“Uh huh,” was all that Walt could get out.
“Something else I hate is body hair.”
“As much as banana strings?” inquired Walt, trying hard not to laugh.
Ram ignored him.
“You know, man has been evolving for nearly two million years. Women, too, of course,” he quickly injected. “You’d think in that amount of time that we could have evolved to the point of doing without hair. I mean, what good is it? Use to be that the length of hair pretty much defined males and females. Not true anymore. Guys with ponytails and hair down to their shoulders. Bald women.
“And hair seems to grow in the most ridiculous places — places where we don’t seem to have any use for it at all.
“I can picture the places crossing your mind right now, Walt.
“And men and women all spend too much time fussing with hair. Women spend huge sums getting their hair plumped and colored and dyed and straightened and curled and coifed and then they spend time shaving their legs and armpits.
“Men aren’t much better. They go to a barber shop once a month. They shave every day. Or they grow really ugly beards or mustaches or goatees or sideburns. Nowadays they seem to be sporting a three-day beard all the time. What sense does it make to groom yourself so it looks like you haven’t shaved in three days?
“And what good is hair, really? We grow it in our ears, our noses, over our eyes, all of which we constantly have to trim. We buy electric shavers or safety razors or throwaway razors and shaving cream and aftershave.
“Hair just seems to serve no useful purpose whatsoever. I think we’d all be better off if we had evolved to the point where nobody had hair. There’s still enough noticeable physical differences between men and women to not require hair.
“’Course, that means we wouldn’t have barbers and beauticians, but I guess they could find something useful to do.”
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Walt just toyed with his cane, bemusedly stunned at the outpouring.
“How about you, Walt? Anything you really hate?”
“Oh, yeah,” responded Walt. “Don’t we all? But I need to ponder this hair thing for a while. Besides I need to get over to Bennie’s for a haircut,” he said, rising from the bench and concealing a smirk.
“See you next time.”
“Right,” said Ram as he pulled on an errant hair at his ear and watched Walt walk away.
