January 22, 2009
Sometimes, I still can’t believe I did it. Shaved my head, that is. For most of my life, I dreaded the thought of being bald. Even Star Trek‘s Captain Picard and Captain Sisko couldn’t change my mind. My father went bald at a young age, in his early 20s, and I was always afraid of ending up like him. Back before I realized how amazing my dad really is (think my teens and early 20s), I was embarrassed by the lack of hair on his scalp. I grew up thinking I never ever wanted to look like he did, with that fringe running around the sides and back of his otherwise bald head.
Yet here I am, bald as a cueball. This week, I started shaving my head. And for some reason, I don’t hate it. I do feel to an extent like I was driven to do it by follicular conditions. Though I didn’t go bald in my early 20s like my dad, my hair thinned out in my late 30s, and by my early 40s, I didn’t have much left in the middle region of the scalp. One day, I finally decided to stop trying to cover it up. “I’m not fooling anybody anymore,” is what I said. Better to shave it off than do a dreaded comb-over…and I’m not vain enough to go for a hairpiece or implants. Why bother?
Baldness seems to be more acceptable these days, for some reason. In fact, now that I’ve started shaving my head, I’ve been noticing more and more guys who do the same thing. Personally, I see it as an evolutionary statement; as we become more advanced, we evolve beyond the need for hair on the head. When you see advanced alien species in movies and TV shows, do they tend to have thick heads of hair? Wrong-o, bucko! They’re bald. Big bad alien bald.
So the adventure has begun. Yet another leap forward, as I draw the razor over my head, making myself look the way I swore I’d never look. Throw another illusion on the bonfire of the vanities. And somebody get me a new mirror so I can shave the back of my head without missing spots! See you tomorrow!
