Once upon a time, a child was born with long, silky blond hair. In fact, she came out of the womb, not head first, but hair first. The doctors and nurses and her parents were both fascinated and repulsed by the sight of the bloody blond hair that lay pooled on the hospital bed. A nurse came toward the infant with scissors but the mother stopped her. “No,” she said. “Let the hair stay. I will wash it myself.” She looked up at her husband whose face was a pale shade of gray. “We will call her Rapunzel,” she said and her husband dutifully nodded.

They had all expected Rapunzel’s hair to fall out and then regrow slowly, normally. But the hair stayed and it continued to grow until, by the time Rapunzel was walking, her hair followed behind her like a princess’s wedding train. And by then the whole…