Okay, this is getting a little scary. I have two things in common with vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan. You might remember, we’re both Fletch aficionados.
Much has been made of Congressman Ryan’s facial likeness to classic TV character Eddie Munster. I’ve heard their shared trait described a number of ways, including “that Little Hair Triangle-thing That Drops Down In the Middle of His Forehead.”
Does no one remember the correct term for such a feature?
It’s called a widow’s peak.
Unlike most people, whose hairlines run straight across their foreheads, fewer others have a V-shaped point in the hairline in the center of the forehead. Unfortunately, these others include me.
I say unfortunately for two reasons – one, the belief, going back to the mid 1800s, that a downward point in one’s hairline, which resembles peak of a widow’s hood, portends early widowhood; and two, I have always considered mine an ugly genetic deformity.
When I was an adolescent in the 1970s, the fashion was for girls to wear their hair parted in the middle. My role model at the time was actress Susan Dey, whose hair cascaded in perfect symmetry from the center of her hairline. My widow’s peak—and several other traits—stood in the way of looking like Susan Dey or any of the girls in my school. If I tried to part my hair in the middle, it curled at the hairline, each side bending in its own rebellious pattern.
I tried a number of things to tame my freakish triangle.
At bedtime, I’d take the hair on both sides and tape it down to my face, believing I could somehow train it to fall uniformly. But alas, I’d wake up covered in masking tape, which had by morning gotten all tangled up in my hair–and quite likely my orthodontic headgear.
One day I got the bright idea to take that whole darn triangle and rip it out by the roots. I drew a nice neat line where I wanted my hairline to be, twisted the widow’s peak into a tightly wound rope and yanked it right out of my head.
My parents were none too pleased with this self-mutilation; I might even have been punished for it. But punishment came anyway as it started to grow out – into a stiff vertical geyser, much like Martin Short’s Ed Grimley.
Isn’t it every young girl’s dream to look like Ed Grimley? Or every middle-aged woman’s to look like Paul Ryan?
Well, they’re no Susan Dey.
Jury rigged? Hmm. I didn’t know that, but later learned that jury rigging (no Casey Anthony jokes) is a sailing term.
It goes on to explain that “the adjectival use of ‘jury’ in the sense of makeshift or temporary dates from at least 1616, when it appeared in John Smith’s A Description of New England” and lays out 
Urban Dictionary explains that “jerry” has come to refer to something that is bad or defective: “a pejorative use of the male nickname Jerry.” Jerry as a pejorative? I didn’t know this either; did you?
All the while I was poring over these contemporary sources, what was really lingering in the back of my mind was Michael Jackson’s 1980s jeri curl.
Word Nymph 