Friday, December 19, 2008

53 - Eating/having dandruff

Back in primary school, I had a classmate that would eat his own dandruff. He had an awful lot of it to indulge himself with and as a thoughtful young boy back in the day, I really had to convince myself to believe that eating dandruff was wrong. It's dangerous to have a kid with such a habit go to school with lots of other kids and have the other kids potentially see it and practice the bad habit themselves. It reminds me of Fat Bastard in Austin Powers: Goldfinger. It's horrible. It's like those horror stories you hear about people that eat their own boogers or suck on their own earwax. It's enough to make someone vomit. Yeuck.

I went to get a couple of injections about a year ago because I was going to Thailand and I didn't want to get malaria. As I sat in the lobby waiting for my name to be called up to signal me into the doctor's office, I noticed that the 20-something man sitting next to me had many, many white flakes all over his hair. What made it even worse was the fact that there was a fan in the room that moved from left to right and left again. Every time it pointed toward us, the man's dead skin would depart from his head and arrive on my lap. It took every little drop of willpower inside me to resist standing up dramatically, shouting at the guy to suggest he use some special shampoo or something, risk getting bitten by a malaria-containing mosquito and leave without getting my injection.

I take pride in having relatively clean hair. I used to wash it with three shampoos and two conditioners everyday because I had this whole germaphobe phase. It was quite troublesome and expensive to do that on a daily basis. Now, I wash it everyday with one shampoo and one conditioner. I changed my ways. Go me!

Anyway, having dandruff is something I really can't stand about some people. As for consuming it after it's fallen from one's head, I hate that with a much greater intensity. It's utterly revolting.

17 comments:

Frankie and Bella said...

Ohh...how funny, yet digustingly gross at the same time. :) The guy at the doctors would have repulsed me also...eww.

Robot Nine said...

Ick. I had a friend with eczema all over his arms. That was a challenge when going out to eat togather.

Michael said...

Frankie: It is funny for a story. Hahaha.

Alan: Eczema... know a couple of people with it. I can't say I've never turned down a girl because of it...

Anonymous said...

excuse my language, but what the hell?! how could someone possibly pick the dandruff out of their hair, put in their mouth and swallow it? that's probably one of the most disgusting things I've hear. dead skin cannot be nutritional. I guess I shouldn't question it haha.

Gerry Hatrić said...

Ugh! Must have been large flakes to be considered something you might want to pop in your mouth! :/

Anonymous said...

Hello again. Just burst out laughing at your description of the fan blowing his dandruff onto your lap. I know exactly what you mean, I hate dandruff too, yet, whenever I see someone with it there's some odd fixation of me looking at it even though I think it's gross!

Your class mate sounds like a loon. Although, having said that, I used to have a schoolmate who ate his eraser and spurned other kids on to do the same thing.

Michael said...

Jessica: Sometimes, questions don't have answers and I believe this is one of those situations. It was one of the most fascinating habits I've ever seen in my life. I watched him do it almost everyday for five whole years in primary school and as horrible as it sounds, we got used to it...

Mulled Vine: I asked him about it before. He loves how there can be so much flavor in such a small organic thing.

Vivienne: Ah, it's usually those things that draw the most and the most intense attention. In retrospect, I find him a loon too. I think eraser's are dangerous to consume. Lead poisoning...

Douglas said...

Just a different POV, maybe that guy in the doctor's office was there because of his dandruff. I stepped onto an elevator at work one day and a pretty young lady was there in a sundress. The skin on her bare arms was red and flaking. It looked quite painful. I asked her if it hurt and she said not that much, she was used to it. She suffered from psoriasis and had most of her life. I then realized I had seen her before but she always had long sleeves covering her arms. It must have taken a lot of courage to show up with bare arms.

On the other hand, she didn't eat the flakes...

Michael said...

Douglas: I knew someone would point out that the guy might've been there to treat his dandruff, and I made a small bet with myself that you'd be that someone. I used to go to school with a girl that had a serious skin disease that she was born with. She basically could not have smooth, non-dry skin. She had no choice but to flake everywhere, avoid extreme sunlight and rain, and, in the words of our old teacher, "get used to her appearance which can be somewhat startling at first". The whole of our school, nearly 2,000 students and staff, were notified of her arrival before she joined our community. I worked with her in the school play and it's really not bad at all. I can understand how it can be hard to tolerate/adjust to for some others, though.

King of New York Hacks said...

I'm just worried that they will enjoy the dandruff so much that it will lead to a bigger diet selection of arms and legs and other cannibalistic delicacies.

Toivoa ja Elämän said...

that is disgusting!!!!!!!!!!
who eats dandruff????

Michael said...

King of New York Hacks: Yikes.

Larissa: It is, isn't it?

I wanted to note that you gave me your real name in a comment after I had addressed you as "Toivoa" which I misunderstood to be your first name. I can call you something else if you're worried that calling you "Larissa" will let your friends in the "real world" find out about your blogging.

Jia Jun, said...

Lols. ! Funnyyyyyy :D

Michael said...

Jia Jun: Glad you found it so. :D

italianabella567 said...

I know it sounds gross, but its a form of OCD. just like pulling out hair, or obssessing over lipgloss. Its OCD, because this happened to be when i was very young. but i got meds and i deffinitly dont do that anymore!!

Anonymous said...

Dude, it's actually an unfortunate mental problem and doesn't deserve such rude contempt - I'm sure there's plenty of people who are grossed out by something you do. Like italianabella said, it's OCD and is usually linked to depression. So that kid in primary school probably had something that was seriously bothering him, like family problems or bullying.

0C8OKing said...

i'm a 22 year old unemployed student living with my parents.

it could be either OCD or a condition called trichotilomania (otherwise kmowm as "pica". the sufferers don't only go for just hair dandruff, they go for skin, mucus from the nostrils, nails, scabs, hair, acne pimple plugs (the hard sebum that shoots out when you squeeze a pimple), pus, blood, fluid from cysts, even feces, urine and the smegma that collects under the foreskin of uncircumcised males.... basically anything from the body someone could swallow easily.

doctors claim it comes from an inbalance in iron in the body; i'm not seeing a connection between the iron and dandruff or any of these skin byproducts.

i myself have been affected by it for more than 18 years. i started when i was a child with nail biting and picking my nose and eating it,increasing to eating popping blisters and eating the skin. soon, i had purchased a cuticle nipper from a cosmetics store and was chopping bits of dead skin out from my feet to chew on like gum. when i got hurt and acquired a scab, i would yank off the scab no matter how bad it hurt and chew on it. when i hit puberty, it started with 3 new things; popping pimples and eating the pimple plugs (a serious favourite, i would go at my skin with tweezers for hours trying to find pimples to explode) and and due to maturation i started getting small cysts in my ear lobe i could squeeze and explode that i would eat the remains of, and whhen my hair started coming it, i used to pull out the hair by the roots of the follicle individually and eat the hair roots. blackheads started to form in the enlarged pores in my nose and i used to squeeze and pop them all the time.

currently my main attractions are scraping at my head for scabs to collect dandruff to eat, tearing the skin off my feet with the cosmetic nippers, eating fingernails on both the hands and toes (especially the pinky toe, which has a more tender nail), eating the acne and scabs and (my favourite) cyst sacs that explode out of the cysts i get in my ears.

this is the first time i have ever told anyone the extent of my problem with this. i think a lot of it has to do with stress and the fact i was raised very "hands on" with a lot of punishment from my parents. in addition to all of this, i am also a heroin and prescription drug addict. my life right now has been complete misery and i care very little about myself :(