I never thought this would happen to me.

Figure 12: I have a tail now

I swear to god it was an accident. I never planned it out this way. If I could turn back time, maybe things would be different. Nobody can live a life without regrets, you know, and if I could choose just one thing to change over all these years so various and full of detail, I'd never have accidentally grown this tail.

Look, I understand if you don't want to be my friend anymore. I mean, I have a tail now. Things are gonna be different. I can accept that. I got no one to blame but myself. I let my guard down, you know? God help me but I let my guard down, and now I have a tail.

I thank you all in advance for your continued support/condolences as I ponder my next course of action. Certain tails are reversible, but that's pretty much only in the movies. I'm afraid this one may have reached a certain "escape velocity," so to speak, and has now doomed me to a life of sitting in ever higher chairs to keep my tail from brushing the ground. I hate high chairs.

Don't cry for me. Don't you dare. You have a wonderful head of hair with all the correct protuberances befitting. Don't waste this gift. Sometimes the Lord will open a window, and another window will open out into a door with a window, but sometimes when He closes a window He opens a window. It's like, you can see the Universe in that window. Its like, there were two footprints in some places but in others there was a third footstep, but only the third footstep was just a faint dragging line, because all along my tail was behind me, and now it is all sandy. And it's like in each grain of sand is a whole entire Universe, and in each Universe is a man, a man who has accidentally grown a tail. There is a place for us, though. Dont you cry. Don't you cry tonight. For everywhere a child is mesmerized by the ever-rising spiral of the classic barber's pole, I will be there. Everywhere a man walks into Great Clips not looking like Bob Saget but walks out looking just like Bob Saget, I will be there. Every time a woman tells her hairdresser to make her look like Jennifer Aniston, but then she doesn't, I will be there. No, don't cry for me. As sure as "two bits" must follow "shave and a haircut," as sure as each day somebody responds "all of them" to "did you get your hair cut," as sure as even the most unobservant man happens once in a blue moon to guess correctly when asked if he "notices anything different about me," I will be there, my glorious tail fluttering majestically in the breeze behind me, the mane of the mightiest lion, the tail of the mightiest ass.

Know this: the mightiest ass is me, dear reader. And this is my tail.