Musing#2: If you've seen me in the last 15 years, you'll know I am mostly bald. I look a bit like a monk, hair wise. A very hip monk I hope, but there isn't much you can do creatively with my hair line that doesn't involve a very long, complex comb over or a wig.
Which brings me to part one of my hairstory. Thirty years ago I was sitting in the barber chair, well stylist back then, it's a stylist if you have hair. The place was called the Head Shed. With out being asked, my barber says "you know you can get a crown piece". Although I knew I was getting a little spot up there, I didn't think it required a rug just yet. Instead, I just decided to stop parting my hair. People were still wearing longer hair and combed straight back was actually a style at that time.
This seemed to work OK for a while until one day the girl I was dating (Rose's room mate) walked up from behind me and announced "hey, you're going bald!" The spot was the size of a 50 cent piece, but I guess to a 23 year old girl, it was a shock. So there was no hiding it anymore. I refused to start down the comb over path.
A year or two later, I'm sitting in the barber chair again, still the Head Shed at their new location and with the new owner Tony. He talked way too much and got off on rants on topics I didn't want to discuss with a worked up guy with scissors and razors near my neck, so I pretended to nap while he cut my hair. It went quicker and I got a better haircut if he wasn't talking to me. So I'm sitting there with my eyes closed when suddenly I feel a plop on my head, I open my eyes to see me in the mirror with what could best be described as a long blonde Beatles style hair piece. Tony says "well we'd have to get it in dark brown and we would trim it up, but you'd have hair again". I don't think so.
As a balding guy, I was always worried about my hair, but unwilling to do anything as drastic as committing to a hairpiece. Going to a rug is a bit like getting married, once you do it, you're committed to it for good hair days and bad, in sickness and in health, until death you do part. I would prefer a more platonic hairpiece relationship. I would wear it to work, take it off when I got home, probably hang it on the hall tree by the door, wear it to go out on the town, take it off to cut the grass. This is how you treat a hat not hair. I also refuse to wear a hat to hide the baldness. Speaking of hats, do any of the aging rockers wearing hats on stage think we don't know they are bald under there.
I use to spend a fair amount of time getting each of the remaining hairs well placed. I must stress, this wasn't a comb over, but I didn't see any reason to look any more bald than I was. I credit my wife Deanna with giving me the gift of hair freedom. Early in our relationship when I still had a fair amount of hair (I guess you would call this the "going bald" period), we were in Toronto and she encouraged me to stop using a hair dryer and let my mildly wavey hair be wavey. We were out of the country and I wouldn't see anyone I knew so I gave it a shot. I got use to it in a few days. Hair freedom was achieved!
The major disadvantage to baldness, beyond the sunburn thing, is the lack of an early warning system for your head. It turns out that hair functions a lot like eye lashes do for your eyes. Something brushes your eye lash you blink, something brushes your hair you duck. Not when you're bald. I'm slightly tall, about 6'1" and you just can't believe the number of things that are just 6' above the ground. Signs in women's clothing stores, the pipes in my brother-in-laws basement, lights in stores, tree branches, etc. Now you know why we bald guys have a lot of battle scars on our bald heads.
You might think that once you go bald, hair adventures would be over, but actually stranger things happen in the barber chair when you are mostly bald than when you have hair. But those will have to wait for Hair part 2.
