Tuesday, March 25, 2008

On the losing of hair in unfortunate places

As some of you may or may not know, I am in the process of losing some of the hair on my head. I refuse to call it "male pattern baldness" for a few reasons:

1) There is no pattern. There is only chaos, and blindingly white skin, whiter even than my upper thigh, which is also mindbogglingly pale. Ask Wife, if you dare.

2) Male pattern baldness sounds, depending on the day, either too harmless or not harmless enough. On the one hand, it's only hair. On the other, it's the hair on one's head. Unless there's a pattern I don't know about, one that wends its way down a man's chest to his toe hairs, those most precious of growths.

OK, there's really only one reason, because the second was neither interesting nor funny. It just shed an uncomfortably harsh light on my toe-hair fixation.

Anyhoo, I'm not terribly attached to hair in general, really just the ones on my head. Is there a pattern of baldness that attacks, say, the armpit? Or the "happy trail?" The public never hears about these unfortunate cases, maybe because there aren't commercials showcasing remedies. Remedies, by the way, that I refuse to consider. Because the pattern of my baldness is interesting, even mesmerizing. Like a shallow but strong rivulet of water it wends its way from the original, traditional bald spot forward to the forehead, leaving a trail of the aforementioned pearly white scalp. And I stand at the mirror, transfixed by the ever-growing blank space.

Questions to consider as one stares at the most prominent visual sign of aging:

- When is the proper time to just shave it all off, go Kojak?

- What compels a man to consider a combover?

- What does the Google Earth image of the top of my head look like?

- Are there topographical considerations as to the pattern? In other words, could a phrenologist have predicted the direction, and width, of the pattern, back when I was wee lad possessing full, lustrous hair?

- Is every pattern unique, like snowflakes?

- If I hold my head just so, can I still hit on high school chicks? Maybe they won't notice...

- 20 years from now, if there's a cure found, would I take it? Would it freak Children out a little too much? And would that be an incentive or disincentive?

2 comments:

Arica said...

Is it ever too late for you to stop hitting on high school girls???

Charles said...

You know the answer to that as well as anyone - absolutely not.