By Chang Soon-hee

We have a lot of hair on top of our heads. Hair is one of the most important features for women and we spend a great deal of time and money grooming and beautifying it for decoration.

Human hair can be kinky, curly, wavy or straight. People who live near the equator tend to have tightly coiled hair which better impedes the passage of UV rays into their bodies, relative to straight hair. In women's views, our hair does more than just protect our heads from falling objects or insulating us from the sun's heat.

When a soldier in the front line gets badly injured, a sensitive mother at home feels it most likely via her hair working like a high performance antenna. American actress Jennifer Jones playing for a Chinese doctor in her Hong Kong apartment felt it when her lover, a war correspondent played by William Holden was killed in the Korean War in the 1955 romance film "Love is a Many-Splendored Thing." Women my age would be able to hum the beautiful song which was later recorded by Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra, and won the Academy Award for Best Song. Jennifer Jones had well groomed long black hair.

Actually, women's hair works much better than the antennas for radios, televisions, mobile phones or even spaceships. The mother and her children use the same frequency band, like a mobile phone. We won't need to ask scientists to research the reason as we know it has something to do with love. The Houses of Montague and Capulet were sworn enemies but Juliet's long blond hair and Romeo's somewhat brown curled locks must have been on the same frequency which worked well for them.

Women may cover their hair with headscarves, a common part of the hijab in Islam and a symbol of modesty required for certain religious rituals. Still, I'm sure just covering their hair with a piece of cloth will not prevent it from working like an antenna.

Hair lasts much longer in the grave than most body parts. The spirits of our ancestors are probably hidden in their hair. If not, Koreans wouldn't build such elaborate graves on the slopes of mountains and visit these round mounds twice a year as they have done for generations.

Mothers visit hairdressers to keep their antennae updated all the time so that they won't miss their children's emergency signals. Girls do the same but for the reason of catching boys' signals, or vice versa. Boys are bad at catching the girls' transmissions as they then to keep their hair short and poorly maintained. And men tend to lose their hair as soon as they reach 40, then they let their beards or sideburns grow in its place.

Buddhist priests shave their hair in order to shut off the junk signals coming from mundane life. Soldiers and high school students preparing to take exams do the same for the same reason.

Many artists and scientists let their hair become long and matted for the same reason as women do. Newton, Galileo, Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Einstein all had long, thick hair. They probably felt that their long hair had something to do with their new discoveries and inventions. Youngsters these days change the color of their hair ― yellow, brown, red, or green ― in order to catch more waves from the opposite sex, some from the same sex. It seems to me they are just hurting their antennas with toxic chemicals.

Why then do I still have to visit the hair salon often while I have no business catching human airwaves?