Enjoy Your Hair, Boys, While You Can

Look at these sad 40-year-olds. Take a look, guys, that's you at 40 (or less). It's gonna happen, there's no doubt about it, and there's nothing much you can do about it, in fact, nothing. I know your response: "Then I shall live like there's no tomorrow, for there isn't!" That'd be fine, except such living leads to a greater appreciation for life, making your depression at 40 that much more devastating. Better to live resigned today and spare yourself the absolute depths tomorrow.

Believe me, I know all about this subject, like every other guy over 40. I was fine at 39, then as 40 neared, I woke up every morning with entire handfuls of hair on my pillow. Soon the supply diminished, the handfuls got smaller, until the remaining supply didn't know what to do. The fact that I still have hair at the edges, much like the third guy from the left (above) is my only consolation. But there's nothing good about it. You're always tempted to try a comb over, only to be called on it by guys under 40.

This painful subject's always on my mind, of course, but it came to my mind more powerfully today because I happened to see maybe 12 youngsters at church with bushy bushy hair. One kid's was very wavy, full, and even in his eyes. He had something of that Freddie Bartholomew charismatic look, you know, or perhaps a little more unruly, like Douglas Croft. Then my mind automatically pictured him at 30 or 40, balding, balding, bald, and I thought, "You poor innocent!" All he'll have is a slick head and a picture of himself as a kid. His kids, assuming he's able to find a woman, will look at it and laugh, "Dad, you had so much hair!" Of course he'll take it in stride, like every old man must, our daily cross.

Another kid's hair was just like Anthony Wager's, you know? with more than a hint of Johnny Sheffield, at least in the curl. I thought, "God, there but for the age of me, go I!" (Hope these references from the 1920s aren't too obscure.) And another's was very nice, straight like Jackie Coogan's, the young Jackie. What a head of hair! Beautiful, straight, but full, and we all know what happened to Jackie. Bald as a light bulb, with, in fact, a light bulb in his mouth! "Spare me a similar fate, O God, keep me under 40!" might be your prayer.

The ideal thing -- and I know I'd never get their undivided attention -- would be to talk to them. And share some wise advice. Marry young would be at the top of the list. Get her locked in, deny her an education if you must, anything to keep her when you hit 40. Although, thinking it over, maybe an education wouldn't be so terrible, just so you keep her entirely dependent in some other way. Say she's learned the piano and is brainwashed, thinking you're behind her talent. Because, believe me, 40 arrives before you know it. The speed of time literally doubles at 30.

These boys also might need advice on their career. You need an early start, even if it means baling on high school. If you have even a hint of giftedness -- or you can fake it -- present yourself as a prodigy and get a leg up on the competition. I know there's a million businesses out there that'd snap up a prodigy (or impersonator) in a heartbeat. Memorize a bunch of stuff, be pushy, be confident... and by the time 40 gets here and your hair's gone, you'll be locked in. With the right luck, you'll be president of the company and able to call your own shots.

One critical thing to avoid is this -- anxiety. Now, maybe everything I've said so far has made you anxious. Big mistake on your part. It is critical -- critical, I say! -- for you to remain calm. Quick, take a deep breath! Quicker! There's no time to lose! OK, exhale it slowly, slower! for crying out loud! Good God! Somewhat off to a bad start ... now, back up -- you've just speeded up the balding process. Advice: Take a nap and come back.

You can readily see, I hope, the psychology of balding is very tricky. Consider these statistics: If anyone even suggests to you that you will go bald, as I'm suggesting today, your likelihood of being bald early based on that alone is an extra 50%. Then, and this is no joke, the more you think about it, the more you worry about it, the percentage rises. It's been my experience -- and I'm bald -- that simply noticing other bald men helps you focus on the threat, to the point that you can think of nothing else, and you'll be bald at 25. Seriously, I know a guy just over 25 who couldn't think of anything else. Now he's bald and can't think of anything else.

Probably the best advice is to enjoy your hair while you can. Because it's going to happen. Just don't worry so much about it. Impossible, I know, but worth a try.

Terrible Trouble! The Barber and Pizza Place

I saw the basics of this incident with my own two eyes. But I didn't really know it was in process till I'd noticed the guy walk by three times. I was sitting on a bench uptown. By the third time the guy walked by me I looked up from my phone and started paying attention. Then I was able to piece together the previous three trips in the context of the incident.*

The guy is a guy about town, someone that if you live here you see all the time. He doesn't seem to have a ton of friends -- never a companion -- but everyone, especially businessmen, know him. He's uptown a lot, and must check in a lot with merchants. This time he was going back and forth between the pizza place and the barber shop.

He started out at the barber shop and went to get a pizza for the barber, which he delivered. But there was some problem, so he went back to the pizza place with a dollar, then back to the barber. Soon he returned to the pizza place to get a handful of napkins, then to the barber. Then he returned to the pizza place for a little container of cheese, then back. Then he returned to the pizza place for some red peppers, then back.

By now, with yet another trip, the pizza place thought maybe there was a problem. He explained that the barber was certain the pizza was supposed to have been $7, but it turned out to be $8. The extra trips back were the barber's way of recouping his dollar.

So the pizza man sent him back to the barber with a message, that the pizza was indeed $8, not $7, because extra cheese is a dollar more. The barber sent him back with a message that he hadn't asked for extra cheese, the usual amount of cheese being all he wanted. The pizza man sent back a message that naturally he wouldn't have known that. He put one little knife in the barber's back: People rarely go to the barber, and then it's always the same ones. If the barber remembers what his customers want, that's no surprise. But so many people go the pizza place, many different ones, one order's the same as any other.

Obviously this kind of nasty comment didn't sit well with the barber. Especially since their commerce is only one way, the barber ordering pizzas but the pizza guy never getting a haircut. (I'm sure I would've have a hard time holding my tongue, too.) He sent the guy back to the pizza place with a message: "Your pizza sucks anyway, whether it's $7 or $8." The pizza guy sent him back with a message in return: "Why do you think I never come in for a haircut? The looks of your haircuts aren't the greatest." Their go-between man was Exhibit A, whose head and whole manner look totally bad; he's just a guy with bad hair.

It escalated from there. The barber complained that the pizzas were often dry like cardboard, and in addition, the occasional sandwiches he'd ordered were tasteless and skimpy on meat and hefty on lettuce. The pizza guy sent a message back that haircuts in general are very boring, and that this particular barber's haircuts were the most boring. Plus, and here he was unfair, the barber's toilet paper budget must be through the roof, just to patch up nicks from shoddy shaving practices.

By now the guy had gone back and forth -- I lost track -- maybe 18-20 times. As an emissary delivering messages, he did a fine job. But in my opinion it would've be more helpful to smooth out some of the rough edges of the messages they entrusted to him.

Finally, the pizza guy thought, "The barber actually is a pretty good customer. And we've been here all these years, on friendly terms." The barber, to his credit, also thought it over, "If I don't fix this, I won't be able to order pizzas again, which means I'll either starve or have to order from someone farther away."

The barber sent the guy back to the pizza guy with a friendly word, then to smile and ask about the extra cheese thing. But before asking about the cheese, the guy admitted ordering extra cheese, not to cause trouble, but that's the way he personally orders pizza, so it had slipped his mind, causing the extra dollar charge for the barber.

Of course there's a happy ending, as seen in the picture. The pizza guy kicked the guy out once and for all, then made up with the barber, returning his dollar, who immediately went to the register and gave the pizza guy 50 cents. They both agreed that they had been good neighbors far too long to let this guy screw them up now.

------------------------------------
* An interesting moment for me, when I go from basic ignorance to omniscience

Hair In The Bathtub Drain

I stand amazed in the presence of a hair clog, and wonder how it could ever be, eight to ten hairs and a tub backed up, threatening to run over. You're that close to catastrophe, simply because water can't find a way around a few pestilent hairs!

Hair in the drain, that's all it takes. You could build a dam out of hair and get just as good results. Beavers could skip the gnawing of trees and just lay in some hair. Lay in a few hairs in a random pattern and the water will stand forever!

You couldn't do it with rocks. If you put rocks in the tub, the water would still find a way around them, and down the drain it'd go. Or anything else except hair. Paper, bricks, even a nuclear bomb. You can't plug a bathtub with a nuclear bomb. It can't be done. Only hair. Hair and nothing else.

Somehow hair, by its fineness, has an immediate ability to form a watertight seal, and stops water in its tracks from draining out. I had a hair clog in the tub. (This anecdote is based on a true story of what could conceivably happen.) It literally took two men, seasoned plumbers, working all night, and they couldn't break through or remove a measly ten hairs! And I thought it'd be cheaper to pay by the hair and not the hour! Boy, was I wrong!

Some of the memorable hair blocks that I've seen, other than that one, and they run the gamut, would be:

1) Fairly good flow -- Only a single hair
2) Moderate flow -- A couple more hairs
3) Impeded flow -- Five to six hairs
4) Essentially blocked -- Seven to eight hairs
5) Completely blocked -- Nine still drains after some hours, 10 is hopeless. Anything greater, the hopelessness simply intensifies.

What can we do about it? There's nothing we can do. It's going to happen. Alternately, we could clean the drain after every use. And if everyone could somehow stop losing hair all the time, that would be the perfect solution.

Here's how I've found it's best to clean a hair clog: If you can get a good hold on it, it's easier to pull out. But pulling one or two hairs at a time is time consuming as well as frustrating. The best method is whatever takes the least amount of time and effort, like most things.

She Had Hair On Her Chest

I went to a restaurant today, not that famous but bound to become more famous over time.

Their slogan is "Our New Yorker Will Put Hair On Your Chest," which just happens to be what I want. It's two birds with one stone, a nice sandwich and a lasting benefit.

But I also want it proven true before I waste my money. So I said to the woman taking the orders, "Have you ever had a New Yorker?" She said she'd had many.

Having that assurance, I demanded to see the proof, asking her to remove her shirt and bra. She immediately granted my request, showing me the loveliest display of hair, really fur, that I could ever hope to see.

Naturally, I had the New Yorker, and now it's just a matter of time.

The First Step

The first step in having self-esteem is to orient yourself to the idea.

Let's say you're as low as can be. Everyone else is better than you. You're too fat, too thin, not enough hair, or hair everywhere. I know I have extremely bad hair. I took some pictures of myself yesterday with my dog. The first thing I noticed is my terrible hair. So I'm as low as can be on that aspect of my appearance, for the sake of this example.

Your self-esteem is in the pits. I know how it goes. I still think of myself the way I was when I was between 16-21. Young, good hair, cute hair, a lively step, no bags under my eyes, no wrinkles, didn't feel tired all the time. But we all get old -- if we're lucky. And it's no fault of your own. It's just that time and its steady progress is inexorable.

You feel like "whatever it is" you can't do it. That's how far down your self-esteem is. If only I could be someone else, which of course can't be done. I mean, I guess I could do something about my terrible hair. One thing, it's so thin on top now I'm legally bald. I'm going to look at my tax form and see if there's a deduction for that. I know there's one for legally blind. But if you're blind you're lucky, because you can't see your terrible hair. I could get a wig or a toupee.

I really think people who wear toupees, mostly men, don't have high self-esteem. If they did they'd just bare it. Not that I'm saying don't do anything to enhance your appearance. I might be cutting my remaining hair a little shorter. One thing I hate is the idea that people might be thinking I'm trying to do a comb over. Which I'm actually not. It's just that I've combed my hair a certain way all these years, literally through thick and thin. It didn't occur to me till a month ago that people might think that. Because when I look at myself in the mirror, I actually see someone with hair. At a certain angle, the angle at which you look in the mirror, it doesn't look so bad. But a photo is more objective, especially if you get an angle you're not used to.

My own self-esteem is fairly low, if you can't tell. But that's good, in a way, because it puts me in the same boat as the rest of you. And since I'm trying to work on myself, you see, the same principles that possibly work for me, I'll be able to share with the rest of you. But I'm a little different than most people in this sense, that I've been consciously thinking about my low self-esteem for years. Therefore I have numerous things I've learned already. So you may be starting at square one, but I'm clear out there, miles ahead of that.

I'm also kind of a different in another way. I also have high self-esteem at the same time. Notice how I seem to be praising myself like every other line. I've always had the conviction that no matter how inferior I felt, I compensated for it by the feeling of superiority. So I'm going both ways all the time. All the time. I said I had bags under my eyes. That's true. But technically I should only have a bag under one eye. But the optic nerve only has one switch.

So I understand where you're coming from, if your problem is low self-esteem. (We're assuming that high self-esteem is preferable. But that's debatable. Still, that's the assumption everyone makes. I'm honestly not so sure. At times, and maybe, again, it's because I go both ways simultaneously, I think it's better to be in the pits. Why? Because it's very realistic. If you're losing your hair, your looks, and you're tired all the time, why have high self-esteem? You'll just be running around playing the fool. Young people will look at you and mock. This guy is clearly an old codger and he's pretending to be a spring chicken! But if you had low self-esteem you'd be sitting at home, avoiding the ridicule.

But let me stick with orthodoxy. (No one's hiring me to counsel them in how to have low self-esteem.) Low self-esteem is detrimental to your sensibilities, your outlook. You had it all when you were young, let's say, and now you look at yourself, you don't even recognize yourself. I know I don't. Then I realize this is what everyone's seeing when they look at me! It's dreadful. I hate it. And I always had great hair too. I really did. I used to poof it all up, wave it around, and let it rest in a delicate mound on my head. It was cool. Then I'd put on some granny glasses, a tight T shirt, blue jeans and sandals. I was hip.

But now, I clean a little clump of hair out of the bathtub drain everyday. And then it's resting in a delicate mound in the trash can. The garbage guy comes around every week. And there goes about six clumps of hair. On the bright side, the clumps are getting progressively smaller. On the not-so-bright side, it's because there's less and less to lose.

I don't want to give the impression that self-esteem depends entirely on looks. It really doesn't. Looks help, of course. If you have them, keep them. And if you figure out how to keep them, let me know. I don't want to take shots. And creams don't work that well for me. And I'm not wasting any money on hair products. So if you have any to sell, keep moving! Self-esteem doesn't depend entirely on looks. You can have it without looks. I've heard of it.

Let's get to the end. Like I said at the beginning, the first step in having self-esteem is to orient yourself to the idea. Then ask yourself, "Why not me?" It's a great question. "Why not me? If other people have high self-esteem, why not me? It may as well be me as anyone. And it will be, starting ... NOW."

If you don't get it right away, just keep asking yourself, "Why not me?" Keep asking until you can't think of any reason. At that point, you're on the verge of having exactly what you want.