This is
not an
allegory

I used to have the least hairy back of anyone on the planet. It's not that I had no hairs on my back; that would have made my back hairless, which is an entirely different concept. No, I had EXACTLY ONE hair on my back. It was, as I say, the least hairy back of anyone on the planet.

This hair was located near the top of my right shoulder blade. I had three ways to get at it:

  1. with my right hand;
  2. with my left hand, over my right shoulder; and
  3. with my left hand, behind my neck.

I generally used method 3 when I needed to access this hair. For some reason, though I am right-handed, using my right hand was quite awkward.

What did I do with this hair? Mostly, I tried to pull it out. It can be hard to grasp a hair with fingernails, even more so when you can't see it, even more so when your arm is at an awkward angle, even more so when the hair is rather short. The hair was generally rather short because I kept pulling it out.

I would reach behind my head, try to locate the hair, guess how best to pincer it with my nails, and pull. My success rate was very low, certainly worse than one percent. Whenever I finally managed to pull out my one back hair, I would feel an immense sense of accomplishment. Then I would wait for it to grow back out. It usually took a couple of weeks for the hair to grow out enough for me to have a reasonable shot at pulling it out again. My life was in some way measured by the cycles of this one hair, from pluck to pluck.

I used to have the least hairy back of anyone on the planet. The last time I plucked out the hair was two weeks ago. It hasn't grown back.


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