Living, as I do, in a majority (or close to majority) Black population area, I see things that make me wonder sometimes. But I'm a little too leery to look for the answers.

This is about weaves.

I don't know jack shit about what I'm talking about or what the exactly correct terminology is, so for our purposes I'll explain what I mean when I say "weave".

A weave is the extra hair a black (usually) woman buys for her head. It takes hours and hours to install these things and requires an expert weave installing technician or a really good girlfriend. In Atlanta, I have heard, weaves are particularly elaborate and popular.

Inside our neighborhood Kroger is a store that has hundreds of weaves for sale, hanging on the wall like the trophies of a culture that collects scalps. I have desperately wanted to take a picture of the weavemporium on several occasions, but whipping out my digital camera in that locale would be like waving a pocketfull of hits in front of whatever crackheads happened to be standing nearby, perhaps window shopping for weaves.

What I want to know is, how does the weave end up blowing around in a parking lot, divested from its owner?

This particular weave has been wandering around the train station parking lot, picking up those stringy oak pollen thingys that blow off the trees this time of year, for a week or so. I know that when I first noticed it, it was on the sidewalk by the station entrance, 40 or 50 yards from where it is now.

So did someone snatch it off some woman's head? That would probably hurt like a freaking bitch. I would most likely be able to hear that kind of scream and ensuing fight from my house a mile away, and I don't recall anything like that happening recently.

I can't believe that it would just fall off the owner's head and she, noticing the sudden weight difference, would look down and say, "Oh, my weave fell off. I guess I just leave it there."

I personally like to think that maybe women, when they detach the weave, set it free. Perhaps launching it into the winds like a dove. I don't know.

In our old neighborhood, years ago, we used to walk to the little coffee shop about half a mile away. After walking this route many times, I began to notice that there was a stray braid from a weave on the side of the road about every 100 yards or so. I imagined a woman abducted, yanking out braids and throwing them out a car window, leaving a trail like Hansel and Gretel's breadcrumbs for her rescuers to follow. I couldn't think of any other reason why the individual braids would be strewn along the roadside. How could that happen by accident?

I just don't know. Maybe one day soon I'll get up the nerve to ask one of my friends who wears a weave what her theory might be.

Until then ... godspeed, ratty weave.

We had a staff meeting this morning about our retirement plan. The woman who handles our health insurance was sitting in on this meeting, too. A lot of folks are none too happy about the way our new health insurance handles prescriptions.

The health insurance woman was joking, saying that she wanted to be as helpful as possible, and in fact had a trunk full of tomatoes that she had meant to bring up for us (implying that she would supply the ammunition, and we could throw the tomatoes at her).

In the room was one of our employees, June, who is eighty years old and sharp as a tack. In the perfect quiet lull right after the tomato remark, June says ...

"We have rocks." Smiling sweetly, but still somehow looking like she would enjoy throwing a rock at healthcare lady.

I just about fell out of my chair.