I inherited two things from my father… his Case pocket knife and his balding pattern. I had to wait 64 years to get his knife, but I received his baldness from the day I was born. So as to prevent shock, my mother kept my entire head covered as a baby, but the two photos that exist of me as a child show that I was balder than a watermelon. If you’re still having trouble getting a mental picture, I’m the spitting image of FDR on a dime. Only with less hair than the coin has.
Your average human scalp has 100,000 hairs, whereas mine has 12, give or take a dozen. I didn’t need my first haircut until I was 6 years old, and even today, I only require three haircuts a year. Even then, the barber charges me the full tariff. I complained about this once and he said he wasn’t charging so much for cutting my hair as he was for finding it. An old barber joke, ha, ha. He said I don’t even have enough hair for a combover unless he used the hair growing out of my ears. I told my barber that just once I’d love to know the feeling of the wind blowing my hair in my eyes, but my comedian barber said they’d have to be nose hairs.
I know, I know, I need to find a barber with better jokes.
I know it’s hard to believe, but 50 years ago, hats weren’t as popular as they are today. I started the rage because I wore one all the time — usually a baseball cap. Nowadays, you’ll probably see me wearing a Carhartt beanie because my noggin is always frostier than the Queen of England on a Scottish morning in January. I still wear a ball cap, cowboy hat, or beanie at all times, even at night, and this is why I don’t go to church, funerals, or weddings because you’re supposed to remove your headwear on such occasions. I wore one once to a Catholic funeral and the priest sought me out afterward to tell me that he thought he saw an apparition or the second coming of Christ when I removed my hat, but it was just the glow from my chrome dome.
Sadly, I have yet to find any baldness support groups or follicular telethons, so I must suffer in silence. I just wish the bullying would stop. For instance, the last time we were preg-checking cows, the bullying had reached fever pitch when ReRide mentioned he’d read that hair whorls on a bull’s face were an indicator of fertility. Facial hair was also found to be linked with temperament and scrotal development. Naturally, it was pointed out that I was both bald and childless.
Fred chimed in that down through the ages, various homemade cures have been tried to solve the puzzle of cranial deforestation and hair depletion syndrome. He said some Indians believed that skunk oil or a poultice of cow manure would make hair grow where only a follicle desert existed previously. Before I knew it, two ruffian cowboys had removed my new straw cowboy hat that was made in the style preferred by PRCA cowboys nowadays, with lots of crosshatching and air holes. I was aghast when I saw one bully holding my hat under the cow’s rear end while the other pumped the cow’s tail up and down like a pump handle. The next thing I knew, they were attempting to put my hat back on my head that was half full of manure. The hat was, not me.
Because it was a new hat, and because I’m a tightwad, I hated throwing it away, so I used a high-pressure sprayer and seven kinds of industrial cleaner to remove any trace of manure. Evidently, it wasn’t enough because, in two weeks, I was sprouting little microscopic hairs that were growing in the same stylish weave as my straw hat. I was growing hair faster than green grass grows after three inches of rain!
So be watching for an all new product that beats hair plugs, Rogaine, or anything else for growing hair. I call it Lee’s Magic Hat. But just as with the Impossible Burger, sausage and Chicken McNuggets, don’t tell anyone what it’s made of.
