I just recently discovered AW and have been reading a lot of your stories. Understandably, many of us get bummed out about our condition; particularly the people who are new to it. But in reading many of the posts I've also been reminded of some of the funny things that have happened to me in the 32 years I've been dealing with alopecia. These stories took place during the 3 1/2 years I tried to hide my AA with a wig, when I was 18 - 21 years old.
Back in my late teens and early twenties my friends and I used to cruise the main drag on weekend and summer nights. Some of my friends had hot rods, some had jacked up 4x4's, I had a Jeep. One of the cool things about a Jeep is that you can take the top off. One night, when I had the top off, a friend and I decided to have a little speed contest. As I got to about 45mph there was a sudden gust of wind and I began to feel a little light headed - literally. "Oh shit, my hair blew off!" I yelled to my friend as I locked up the brakes and spun the Jeep 180 degrees. Pretty much all of my friends knew about my alopecia so I wasn't too worried about that, but my wig was brown and it was dark. Luckily, after a little searching we found it. But I lost the race.
Another time a friend and I were at his parents house enjoying the use of their backyard pool. I don't know if any of you AW members swim with your wigs on, but I did. And on this occasion I learned an important lesson in physics; specifically in centripital force. You see, even with a net backing wigs get kind of heavy when they're wet. And my head didn't have enough gravitational force to keep a wet wig on while I executed a 1 1/2 flip off the diving board. The wig flew across the pool, landed in the water and floated. My friend cracked up and said the wig looked like a giant spider floating in the water. From then on we referred to that dive as "The 1 1/2 Tarantula Dive."
This last story Is a little more embarassing since it happened in front of a customer. But the look on his face was worth it. I worked at a full service gas station through high school and college, and one of the things I did was tire repairs. One day a customer brought in a flat tire for repair. I set the tire precariously on the edge of the machine while I aired it up to find the leak and the tire slipped off. As I leaned over to try and catch it, it landed right on the pedal that opperated the air, blasting a huge volume of air through the bead blaster and blowing my hat off with my hair still in it. The hat and wig flew up and hit the ceiling, and I caught it and slipped it back on my head as it came back down. Embarassed, I turned and looked at the customer who stood there and watched the whole thing. The expression on his face was one of shock and horror. When he heard the loud noise and saw my hat and hair blow off, he thought the tire had blown up and taken my head off. Maybe I have a morbid sense of humor, but I couldn't help laughing my head off.
I know a lot of you who wear wigs are worried about how to keep it on tight and losing it on a windy day. I wore a cap to hold mine on, but on a few occasions even that wasn't enough. Yes it was embarassing when it would happen, but with good friends and a sense of humor I lived through it. It wasn't the worst thing that could happen. I'm wondering if anyone else on this site has any humorous stories they would like to share. Sometimes when I can laugh at myself it makes me forget about the depression - at least for a while.