Losing It

I am 20 years old and I live in constant fear that I might be losing my hair.

This is not some sort of irrational paranoia that I developed upon becoming a vicenarian. My entire life I have been dreading the idea that one day I will, like my father did before me, start pulling out tufts of hair each time I touch my head. For my father this started when he was about seventeen or eighteen, and while my locks have staved off the grim barber for a few years, I'm not sure how much longer I can do this. I see strands of hair in my hand and begin to worry, and soon enough the stress over losing my hair begins to make me lose my hair. A vicious cycle (a male pattern even) begins to emerge. But while the stress in and of itself is enough to make a man shed, there are a few other reasons why I think my doo is doomed.

For starters, genetics are not on my side. Every Fox male--my father, my uncle, their father, their uncles (even a picture of my great-grandfather from the turn of the century showed him with my father's glaring hairline)--going back all the way to the O'Foxes in Ireland has been bald. You scholars will tell me that the gene that causes baldness is actually passed down through your mother's father, so I have nothing to worry about. Guess what--bald! That's right, my mother's father was also shining his head for most of his life. My only glimmer hope is that I end up like my mothers uncles who still, despite their age, all have their full heads of hair.

There are also some pieces of folk wisdom that are not going my way. I remember being in third or fourth grade talking with my friend Raymond. Ray said that if you ran your hand through your hair and it was "hard" you wouldn't go bald, whereas if it was "soft" you would. I wasn't entirely sure what his use of these particular adjectives were supposed to mean. I for one thought soft hair was a good thing, and usually when Ray did something like this it was to make me feel inferior. It was no surprise that after running our hands through each others hair and our own, Ray declared his hair "hard" and mine "soft." I couldn't feel a difference, but I trusted his judgement.

Even now, I'm not sure why I believed him. This is the same kid who told me Big Bad Beetleborgs were cool. Then again, Ray was named one of the GQ Best Dressed Real men in America for 2008. I should mention he's also the only one in a hat.

The list of memories goes on. When in middle school and my English teacher, Mrs. Aikman, telling us that you could judge a person's intellegence by the size of their forhead. The example she gave was Shakespeare--whose receeding hair line is not lost on anyone. (Oddly enough, it's the same hairline that my modern drama professor has...talk about "transhistorical" Professor Pethica!)

There was even a point when my sister thought she was losing her hair! (I should mention that this was soon proved to be wholly unrelated to my plight, but it never once escaped me that I was surrounded by baldness.)

And finally, the real reason I think I'm losing it is after years of poking fun at my dad and his clean cranium, all the mean monikers bestowed upon him (shiny, chrome dome, baldy, cueball, Mr. Clean) I'm pretty sure karma is coming to chop off my coiffure (say that five times fast). Granted it's going to get my brother as well, who has been adamant since he was about seven years old that we purchase my father a wig. But we'll wait until he gets older before we tell him.

"-Why, but there's many a man hath more hair than wit.
--Not a man of those but he hath the wit to lose his hair."--Comedy of Errors

It's an odd set of sensations, waking up and finding some strands of hair on your pillow, taking a shower and feeling a few pieces come out as you wash your hair, the occasional piece of hair in your eye--it all adds up! There will be days when I'm working in the library and I'll scratch my head and there it will be in my fingers. But maybe the only reason I notice all of these different losses is because I'm so convinced that they are signs of some sort of hair-pocolypse. Maybe it's nothing. Maybe.

But then again, if it comes to it, I think I'll be able to live with being bald. There are some benefits. I personally hate getting my haircut. I will save lots of money on shampoo. No more bad hair days. I could sell my head as ad-space. I will be more likley to be rescued if I am stranded in a desert if I use my head like a cosmetic mirror to signal airplanes. The possibilities are endless. But probably best of all, I'll be in good company:

At some point I'm going to have to face my follicle fate just like everyone else, and hopefully I'll be ready for it. Until then, I'm in the market for a really good looking hat.

(For your amusment, here's another famous baldy in action.)