TRY NOT TO WIG OUT

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So there we were, when a lull hit the conversation.

My wife, mother-in-law and I sat there for a few seconds, each of us waiting for another to keep the conversation going.

“So,” my mother-in-law said, “did I ever tell you about the time I got in a car wreck and my wig flew off?”

Not only is that the first time that question had ever been uttered to me, I am fairly confident that it is one of the few times it has been asked during the history of oral communication.

For as long as I have known my mother-in-law – even way back when she was just my girlfriend’s mom – I have never seen any indication that she had anything on top of her head save for her actual, attached hair. Being the understanding and non-judgmental person I am, I immediately began staring a hole in her head, my jaw slacked open, like I was about to witness her pull off her faux hair, only to reveal her scalpless head and throbbing brain. And maybe a little alien face in her brain.

As it turns out, my mother-in-law does, indeed, have her actualinto my mother-in-law’s car with such force that – seriously – it flipped her car battery upside down under her hood.

But, as you can guess, with force of this nature, a wig is not going to stay in place unless you have secured it with a staple gun, which I would guess is ill-advised. My mother-in-law started to get out of the car and happened to catch a glimpse in the mirror of her now-wigless hair, sporting only what she calls “rooster-poots,” which she explained as the little bunches that she had to put her hair in order to get a wig over it in the appropriate manner.

At this point, there are several options you can take. You can throw personal appearance concerns to the wind and get out and see if the other motorist is injured. Or, you can see how damaged your car is. But these are all silly and pointless options when you consider that the female mystique is clicking on all cylinders at this point. My mother-in-law opted for Option #3, which was to search the car frantically for her wig, only to find that it had been knocked into the backseat.

Again, another chance to hop out of the car and survey damage, auto or human. No can do. My mother-in-law, under the assumption that her windows are made of one-way glass, climbs into the backseat of her car and gets her wig in hand. Keep in mind she is wearing that stylish 1970s hospital staff attire, which is about as suited for diving into the backseat as it is for running the 100-meter hurdles. Eventually, she makes it into the back of the car and puts the wig on, leaning up to check it in the mirror.

And it’s on backwards. So she switches it around and checks again. Wait, now it’s on backwards. And she switches it again. Wait, now it’s really backwards. She estimated that it took about 50 tries to get the wig on at a level that she could accept as being correct.

After about an hour or so, the police had filed reports on the incident, and everything was taken care of. After getting into work, my mother-in-law went to a restroom to make sure that the wig was still in perfect order. And of course, it was resting comfortably at a nice angle, probably having been that way since she crawled out of the backseat of her car.

In the end, her car was taken care of, and nobody was seriously hurt in the accident. I can only surmise that this accident had to deal a severe blow to the wig fashion trend.