Hair-Raising Tales Pale Next to Husband’s Close Shave

I’ve been on vacation. Here’s what happened while I was away:

A nude man emerged from a drainage pipe in Anaheim and tried to bite a passing Labrador retriever.

A British Airways pilot was sucked from a airliner cockpit during flight and rode out the rest of the journey on the plane’s nose cone.

A reader in Costa Mesa wrote to tell me that cows have magnets in their stomachs to keep barbed wire and other metal from reaching their intestines.

My husband shaved his legs.

There’s a connection here, a unifying message, and I’m sure it must be of cosmic importance. But I don’t do Tarot. So I’ll just have to venture a guess as to what it all means.

Something very strange is going on.

Or maybe it’s just me. Could be I’m a tad too sensitive. Not everything has to mean something. Lord knows I’ve heard that before.

From my husband, for instance.

“What is the big deal?” he says. “I was the only one in the group who didn’t shave his legs.”

For the record, this is a lie. There is at least one other groupie, a God-fearing man with a wife and three children, whose 5 o’clock shadow is still confined to his face.

The group is a bunch of bicycle freaks, guys who get up before dawn almost every day, slap on the Spandex and take to the road.

You got it. These are weirdos. Who shave their legs.

Not that I mind. Why would I mind? Richard wanted to shave his legs, he did, and that’s that. End of story. And besides, I’ve always been open to new ideas.

Take the cow magnets. Makes perfect sense to me. Nature has her ways. And if magnets aren’t exactly Nature’s way, maybe some enterprising capitalist thought it should be. In any case, it’s true. This is America, where cows have an inalienable right to chew barbed wire without undue suffering.

Perhaps an Epilady. That’s what my mother says. Get Richard one of those machines that pull the hairs out by the roots and he’ll be cured.

OK, just let me add here that my husband’s legs are not my problem. I’ve got my own legs to contend with. Fact is I’ve got more than enough to worry about without even considering Richard’s legs.

Like the sad state of affairs in the aeronautics industry, for starters. This troubles me greatly.

Seems that the windshield of that British Airways plane just blew out at 23,000 feet. If it weren’t for the quick thinking of crew members who grabbed the pilot by his ankles, that poor guy would have been a goner.

A spokesman for the British Air Line Pilot’s Assn. called the incident “a freak occurrence which will not unduly worry cockpit crews.”

Worry? Hell, why should pilots worry? You want something to worry about, try thinking about your husband shaving his legs.

Sorry.

Anyway, I think something odd must be going on. Perhaps in the cosmos. Does anybody know what sign the moon’s in?

I bet that naked man in the Anaheim drainage pipe has an idea about this. I’d ask him myself except that he’s being held for psychiatric evaluation.

Seems that things went downhill for the guy after he snapped at the Labrador retriever. The dog’s owner slugged him in the face. And did I mention that the poor fellow was covered with mud? Those drainage pipes can get awfully messy.

Of course, if you think those pipes are messy, just try to imagine the pipes at our house after my husband shaved his legs! A lifetime of leg hairs down the tube.

(Not that I’m the finicky type, mind you. And, what, plumbers only charge something like $237.00 an hour these days. . . .)

OK, as I was saying, what happened with the guy in the drainage pipe was that the Lab’s owner called the cops, who showed up with a dog of their own, Dingo.

“This guy was acting kind of bizarre and they decided it was best not to send an officer in there,” Sgt. Charles Chavez reports.

(Bizarre, sergeant? You think that’s bizarre?)

So what do the cops send in? The dog. And the guy tried to bite him, too. Maybe on the legs, which would, of course, be covered with hair--seeing as how that’s the natural order of things.

Think about it. Since when has male pattern baldness included the legs ?

But, hey, don’t get me started. Believe it or not, I have strong feelings about men and shaved legs. And the last thing I’d want to do is make Richard feel that our marriage can’t support a little experimentation .

Variety, after all, is the spice of life.