COVID HAIR

Writers group prompt...Faded blue ink...getting Covid hair

Writers group prompt…Faded blue ink

COVID HAIR

The alien entered my body sometime on a Monday night. That is my best guess, because by Tuesday morning I was one sick puppy. Aches and chills, a congested chest, and a woozy feeling all arrived together, uninvited, perfectly playing the part of the houseguest from hell. It felt like a bad cold wearing a flu costume with a bronchitis hoodie. I had a cough that made me sound like a sea lion auditioning for something otherworldly. My head felt roughly the size of a watermelon — with about as much going on inside of it.

I spent the entire day in bed, drifting between consciousness and unconsciousness. The beginning of the day i spent convinced I was going to die, and the latter part of it coming to the painful realization that I wasn’t going to be that lucky. I was going to live.

I sat there behind some Robitussin, deep in a Dayquil haze, slowly coming to grips with another reality entirely. After three years, eight months and five shots, I had gotten Covid. A faded blue ink line on a test strip had emerged causing me to test positive for the illness.

Covid is one thing, loss of taste and smell another, but they never warn you about one other side effect. They don’t put it on any chart. No doctor has ever mentioned it and it’s not in any waiting room pamphlet.

Covid hair.

Every time I passed a mirror on my occasional expeditions around the house, there I was, staring back at myself. Covid hair was on full display, clearly working its own program, on its own schedule, completely independent of anything I might have to say about it and looking at it was freaking me out.

I am blessed with a lot of hair. Good, long, strong hair. Blown dry and washed, it is quite manageable. Left to its own devices, it is chaos. Pure, unbridled, unrepentant chaos.

There is nothing in this world quite so effective at reshaping your hair as spending two days laying on it while your body cycles from hot to cold, from cold to sweats, from sweats back to chills. Add the architectural influence of a pillow pushing up one side of your head for hours at a stretch, and the resulting look is, at best, futuristic. At worst, it is a desperate cry for help.

The right side of my hair was like the windward side of an island in a hurricane. The left side looked as though it had just been blown dry and was ready for an evening out. One head of hair. Two completely different fashion statements.

Now, let it marinade in some body oils, heat, and the ambient humidity of a sick man under three blankets, and the texture of my normally soft and silky hair had taken on the consistency of a mangy dog who wandered into Burning Man during a rainstorm and never quite found his way out.

Running my fingers through it now required extreme caution, lest I break a finger in one of the many knots that had materialized overnight. Covid, it turns out, has skills. It teaches your hair how to tie itself into pseudo dreadlocks. Nobody tells you this. It is simply something you discover on your own. Alone. Looking in the mirror in a Dayquil haze, with nowhere to be and with nothing to do..

Until I was well enough to shower, I was stuck with Covid hair, dancing to its own reggae music, on its own timeline, with total disregard for me and my wishes.

Faded blue ink on a Covid test had grabbed me by my Covid hair and thrown me down hard. Beat me up, kicked me, and left me for dead on the bathroom floor next to my Robitussin and my shattered dignity.

I slowly arose and showered. Hot, very hot water, good shampoo, and about forty-five minutes of standing completely still, allowing the waterfall shower to cascade over me. Staring blankly into the steaming mist, washing away the things I could no longer unsee.

The alien is gone. The hair is back and somewhere in my trashcan is a little plastic test strip with faded blue ink. Now harmless, crumbled and of no use to anyone

In the end, I had defeated Covid hair and the dreaded faded blue ink.

Didn’t pay for it. Earned it. Came with nightmares instead of a receipt..

© 2026 Kenneth Kates