A while back I started to notice my hair was thinning. My brother constantly tells me that, but mostly to make himself feel better. Though lately, I thought he might have finally become right. I wasn’t sure I could sport the gel-less flattop again.
Then I washed my hair with shampoo (instead of the bar of soap I normally use) and it all bounced back to life.
Crisis over.
But during that time, I did notice that cliche of the hair moving down one’s body. My belly had gotten hairier.
And that lead to some serious navel gazing. Not the artsy fartsy type where I ponder how to become a better husband/father/employee/citizen, but where I actually just started noticing my bellybutton. And in that pursuit, I discovered something I found slightly odd.
Not the marble sized lint balls – those guys have been around for a while.
But this newly bolded center line of hair on my stomach and my belly button were not aligned.
At first I thought it was just lights and mirrors and shadows playing a trick on me. But after several different lights, angles, mirrors, and shadows, the effect was consistent.
Of course, I take the basic symmetries of my body for granted and know at a detailed level, everything is slightly different. Coordinating a distributed system like our body’s cellular development is no simple task and I should be happy with the fact that my two legs are close enough in length that I can walk without too much of a limp. But having an off center belly button? Come on!
I’m wondering if it has always been that way and I just didn’t have a measuring line, till now. Or maybe, over the years with my fascination of gaining and losing circumference around my waist, things might not have snapped back the same on both sides. Or do I just sleep on one side too much and over the years, my bellybutton has just succumb to gravity?
Do I base my hypotheses on cartoons too much?
Anyway…just thought I’d share this little story so you can have a chuckle at my asymmetries…
…and wonder about your own.