Blog of Bald

It was yesterday I realised I was going bald. Well it was yesterday that I faced up to the fact; stopped the denial and tried to stare down the barrel with what I’d like to say was dignity, but what was more closely akin to, if I'm honest, sniffling. I mean you just don’t think it will happen to you. You’ve never banked on it, never planned for it. If I’d known I would have done something, lived a somehow fuller, hairy headed life before this day came. Somehow celebrated my dome fur, wouldn’t have taken a single day of absent minded combing or brushing for granted. But no, you don’t know, you’re not informed, you just go blindly on, imagining the wrinkled, bent over image of the future you, aged, and decrepit, but with shimmering, healthy, silver locks.

I’d seen bits of slightly exposed head in passing but thought nothing of it. Applied my product, flattened it down, spiked it up, slappy chop chop and wandered off whistling. But slowly there’s this dawning, a panic plying of hair this way and that, then the wobbling bottom lip. “This can’t be happening to me, I’m, I’m, I’m...” I’m what? Young? Special? Beautiful? Genetically immune? Au contraire mes amis, it appears I’m nothing more than a future, frequent hat wearer. I know time waits for no man, we’re all getting older, I may have passed the brow (pun entirely intended) of the hill of physical wealth, but if I have to show signs of aging I’d rather be grey than bald any day – grey says wise, grey says distinguished, grey says Gere. Bald says De Vito.

Intellectually I’m trying to be level headed about this (tenuous pun intended), to see this as a necessary phase for a man to pass through, the opportunity to let Peter Pan fly away, to exorcise Dorian Gray, to push Narcissus into the lake and make off with his clothes. This is healthy I say to the mirror, this is natures’ necessary poke at the ego; this is the point where humility replaces vanity. This is good, this is development, this is, this is the beginning of a beautiful and varied…hat collection.

Tell you what’s strange though; you start to realise you’re constantly on the look out for other baldies. Safety in numbers? Searching out those worse off than you? And they’re everywhere. Can’t say I’d really noticed them before. In the lift, on the street, in the office. Do they look happy, is it getting them down? Are they living sad, depressed, bed-sit lives because of their baldness? Were they once prosperous, happy, laughing, youngs who one day caught themselves in the mirror?

Then the wondering what kind of bald your going to become – the bald dome, a la Friar Tuck, the receding side bits, a la Ray Reardon - will it all go, a la my dad? Will I keep the front bit, if so for how long – my god what am I going to look like? Will my friends recognise me? Will they laugh, will women shy away from the very look of me, will I even recognise myself? WHAT will I look like? I’d rather just know now, not have this dragged out – a tragi-comic opera of disfiguration…

Note to self: humility remains absent….guess it'll be along presently......