The Benefits of Balding

In recent years, my forehead has rapidly advanced in the battle of the receding hairline, so much so it's surprising I don't wake each morning to a pillow covered in fallen folicles. I'm not particularly bothered by the idea of balding, with the possible exception of not being very fond of the shape of my head. Modeling and movie stardom might never have been in the cards for me, but it would be nice if my dome didn't resemble a semi-deflated ball of room-temperature mozerella.

Alternatives to balding are available, toupees and hair transplants being the most obvious options. Unfortunately, I've never wanted to look like my hair was installed by the Home Depot carpet department or planted neatly in symmetrical rows by some subcutaneous farmer. And there's something about all those chemical scalp treatments that scares me. The hair is surrendering willingly. Who am I to keep it from making a graceful exit?

This all got me to thinking recently about the many reasons to celebrate going bald and I came up with the following items. Feel free to add more in the comments.

1. Hair cuts are much, much quicker. Gone are the days of trimming here, blending there, feathering the crown into the back and sides and wondering if bangs are manly. Grab the trimmer and buzz me like a farmer shears a sheep. So long as I leave with two ears and most of my blood, it's a job well done!
    
2. No more hair product. I have no need of mousse, gel, spray, conditioner -- hell, I barely need shampoo at this point.
     
3. No longer needing any of those products makes packing for trips a much simpler task, and there's one less bottle of liquid that needs to be checked with my baggage or inspected during the security screening. I was lucky I didn't get pulled for a cavity search the last few times I traveled with a can of mousse. You could see the incredulity on the faces of the TSA workers as their eyes darted suspiciously between the shiny metal canister and my shiny head.
    
4. Temperature control is a breeze. It was easy to overheat and difficult to cool down when a bushy head of hair was the norm. Without that extra layer of insulation, all I have to do is find a shady spot and let the wind do its job. And if your head gets cold, just grab a hat.
    
5. Speaking of which, baldness allows you to build a kick-ass hat collection. I prefer baseball caps, but you can use your sun-exposed cranium to justify everything from a fedora, to a gatsby, to a pith helmet -- whatever makes you feel good about yourself and helps you avoid a melanoma or two.
     
6. Bed head is less of a problem, and eventually not a problem at all. Back when I had a full mop on top, I woke each morning to the most horrendously interesting nocturnal stylings. My favorite was the one where the hair on the left side of my head was smushed tightly against the scalp, while the hair on the right side of my head stuck straight out. I used to call that one "Exit Wound."

© 2016 Mark Feggeler

Shining, Gleaming, Streaming, Flaxen, Waxen

A long time ago, on a scalp far, far away, there once grew a dense forest of straight blonde hair.

When I was a little kid, the poofed mass of yellow on my head turned near white in the New York summer sunshine. My Mother always would comment how easy it was to spot me if I wandered away from her in a store, or was sitting on stage under the bright lights of a public school band concert. Not long after, the quintessential 1980s hair helmet formed like a protective biosphere when I entered the hygienically self-aware stage of my teen years. Cans of AquaNet and bottles of hair gel fell like spent soldiers as each long, blonde strand was carefully lacquered in place.

I got a bad rap in college for growing a mullet, which really wasn't a mullet, but rather a failed subversive attempt to grow my hair long, like some kind of neo-hippie, proto-grunge granola-age-punk. A lack of commitment to the experiment resulted in an unfortunate hairstyle equaled in unsightly aesthetics only by my inability to match clothing colors and patterns. Who says a gray and purple button-up sweater vest doesn't go with acid-washed, parachute cargo jeans and a pink dress shirt? Pretty much every member of the sighted world.

As we tumbled through early adulthood, marriagehood and parenthood, developing technologies made it easy to avoid hair envy. Nothing quells concerns over a receding hairline better than shared social media pictures of your high school friends sporting scalps more barren and devastated than a clear-cut rain forest. This guy was bald in his twenties, that one in his thirties. By the time I reached forty, I felt like the lone survivor of some horrific folicular pandemic.

Not anymore.

The turn of the century brought with it a desire for streamlined simplicity that included My Lovely Wife buzzing my hair to within a centimeter of its life. (Somehow, I still manage to achieve righteous bedhead.) Every once in a blue moon I get the notion lodged in my brain to try growing my hair out a bit. By "a bit," I mean more than an inch. Right around the time the next buzzing is due, I'll catch myself grabbing the mousse to direct my hair along its long-abandoned part. It looks pretty good, too, if I do say so myself. Then two things happen.

The first is when my hair reaches a certain length and suffers what I call the Bozo Effect. The listless and lazy hair on the very top of my head collapses under its own weight while the hair on either side of my head sticks straight out as far as it can possibly go without leaving the scalp -- an unintentional and pathetically sad Flock of Seagulls impersonation, without the benefit of futuristic music video lighting and underrated guitar playing.

The second thing that happens is I catch an occasional glimpse of what my hair really looks like to others. You see, each morning when coiffing my golden locks in the mirror I'm staring blindly at an optical illusion. Where I see a reasonably handsome head of hair, others see glistening scalp gleaming at them from under a few delicate, wispy strands. One photograph of the top of my head is all it takes to bring me back to reality.

Twenty years ago I told My Lovely Wife if my hair started abandoning me then I would buzz it off. Better fire up the trimmers.

© 2016 Mark Feggeler

Old Man Shoes

A few comments on Facebook the other day got me thinking. I know, this whole thinking thing is dangerous, but I risked it.

When my sons graduate from high school as part of the Class of 2020, I will be 52 years old. To some of you old fogies, that might not sound unreasonable, and I'm not typically the kind of person who gets all hung up on age, but I must say that I strenuously object to the whole concept of the fifties as an age range.

For starters, fifty is the first milestone age that sounds old. It's ridiculous to compare fifty to twenty, or even thirty, and expect it not to seem significantly older. But even when compared to forty, an age I reached several years ago, fifty has a ring about it that sounds like a somber church bell.

Take a moment to reflect on the two numbers: forty and fifty. Say them over and over in your head for a minute or two and then tell me that your mental image of a person turning forty doesn't differ dramatically from how you picture that same person turning fifty. Forty suggests a settling in to one's skin, a well-respected and hard-earned maturity, and a classy graying around the temples. Fifty suggests wisps of ear hair like out of control Q-Tips, an irreversible thickening around the waistline, and an I-just-looked-in-a-full-length-mirror understanding of why you can no longer wear the latest trendy summer shorts.

It doesn't help when Our Daughter throws out snarky teenage criticisms, like calling my latest choice in sneakers "old man shoes." Maybe they aren't flashy, or sexy, or cool, but they provide excellent arch support and they don't crowd my toes. All in all, a very practical pair of sneakers. So what if they look like I stole them off a night shift nurse at the hospital?

Back to the point, I suppose this age thing is all just a state of mind.

When I turned twenty it was a joyous occasion -- one year closer to legal drinking age! When I turned thirty, I was a new father and completely oblivious to anything other than changing diapers, thawing frozen breast milk, and figuring out how to assemble plastic children's toys with three missing parts and the wrong tools. When I turned forty, I proudly and declaratively announced it to the world: "I am forty!"

I just hope I can reach fifty with the same enthusiasm. Very likely I will, although I expect there will need to be a strong support system in place to keep my spirits elevated and help reaffirm my belief in the notion that I look good for my age.

Perhaps continuing to monitor the effects of the ravages of time on my old high school friends through Facebook will be enough to do the trick. Unlike many of those poor old bastards, I happen to have more hair on top of my head than I do growing out of my ears. For now...



© 2011 Mark Feggeler