Remember the old Cool Hand Luke movie where the prison warden, in a deep southern drawl, slowly announces to Luke, "What we have he-ar is a fay-lure to co-muni cate."?

I have had several such experiences.

For example a few years back I had a chic short hairstyle that needed a trim. I went to my usual hairdresser, the very woman who had so nicely cut my hair in the first place, and said, "Off with it! Take it all off!"

I had thought I had said it with a wrinkle of laughter in my voice. Apparently, the only wrinkle was in our lines of communication, because a little while later when I touched by hand to my head, there was nothing there. I was GI Jane with a trim.

Of course I should have realized that something was awry when people watching and walking by (people always watch and walk by whatever you do--it took me years to relinquish a sense of privacy) had startled expressions on their faces. I thought I was being paranoid or they were just fooling around. (We love to terrify one another in the middle of haircuts by saying things like, "You meant to lose 6 inches, right?" or "That's very new age and an interesting look for you especially from the back." Or "What's that hole for?") But no they weren't fooling around. They were as startled as I was the first time I saw myself in the mirror.

"It's, ah, very short." I managed to .say at last, my hand tentatively stroking the baby fuzz on my scalp.

My hairdresser looked at me with the saddest eyes, "You didn't really mean for me to take it all off, did you?"

No. Not exactly.

I shrugged and smiled as best I could. "It'll grow," I said. My roommate was on a visit at the time of the cut and returned to find me sitting in the middle of the floor. I can't repeat what she said. And for at least a week that was about all she could say every time she looked at me.

In the six months it took for me to go from bald chic on Star Trek to spiky punk rocker, I experienced a wide range of further failure to communicate episodes based on my lack of hair. "I am not my hair!" I wanted to scream. "My identity is not in my hair." People were just plain horrified and their imaginations ran wild with speculations as to what had happened to me. It amazed me that people felt so passionately about the hair on my head. Their concern was invasive and did not comfort me. My naked head offended their sensibilities and they felt justified in reprimanding me for doing this to myself.

My hair grew back. Everything returned to normal. But I still have a little bald patch in my soul that remains vexed and longs to rectify all the false impressions and assumptions projected on to me. Of course that can never be fixed--it's part of the human condition--we only know others as we know ourselves. (Elizabeth Haysom, Fluvanna Review, June 2, 2005)

Elizabeth Haysom is presently incarcerated at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women in Troy, Virginia. This column is one of a series, published under the general heading 'Glimpses from Inside.'