The Eventuality of Baldness

Hair loss is a moment of cruel discovery. A person finds out one day that there are only a few feeble strands limply standing on his steep forehead. The entire population in the frontal lobe area is quickly vanishing and fast becoming extinct.

This monumental discovery comes at the most unexpected moments. When the people you meet cover their eyes as if hurt by a searing light, know for sure that your hair is fast retreating. It now turns into some sort of an instrument – a deflector of some kind.

With hair loss, the person suffering therefrom realizes that there are now fewer hairstyles which are suitable to his face. The hair simply doesn’t fit squarely on the face anymore. It’s like forcing a square peg on a round hole.

Some found a remarkable remedy to this problem. They let their hair grow to a desirable length on one side so they can flip it over to cover the balding part. Someone coined a term for it: “side flip”. The only setback to this ingenuity is when a gushing wind would blow the chaffs away from the balding part and expose the shiny stump.

The solution is found on some super sticky chemicals that can be spread over the hair to keep them stuck on the skull and not blown away. These sticky chemicals are called Gels in today’s technological milestone. They are actually the current offspring of pomades. Pomades were particularly manufactured in large doses during World War I and World War II. They gained popularity in leaps and bounds during the 1950’s.

I remember as a young boy buying a sachet of pomade called “The Beatles”. A dear friend highly recommended the substance, which at that time, cost only about 2 cents. I used it liberally on my head and it felt like a lump of wax splattered on my scalp. I felt particularly cool about it, but when I walked around the school premises under the scorching sun, the “Beatles” melted down my face. When I touch my hair, the slimy phlegm of pomade was all over my fingers. That was the last time I used “The Beatles”.

Hair loss is also a moment of arrival. A balding person is initiated into an elite organization and becomes a full-fledge member thereof, albeit reluctantly. Sadly though, there are those who refuse to be ushered in to this special community. They are living in abject denial all through their worrying days.

Once I saw a fully bald person who tattooed a full, lush hair on his skull obviously with a surly purpose of misleading the general public about the true status of his hair. The resultant effect is that the head is outrageously scary. Actually, I got mixed feelings. I could not quite make up my mind whether to laugh or to feel really scared. The man looked like a Barbie doll minus the hair, with visible holes all over his skull machine gunned by the needles of the sewing machine.

Others conveniently hide behind wigs. But wigs make the person wearing it really look stupid. I can detect a wig on someone’s scalp from 5,000 miles away. Wigs look exactly like Barbie doll hairs. One cannot truly maintain an atmosphere of formality in front of a man who wears a wig. The wig simply looks awfully awkward with the human face.

A friend of mine fortunately, is not in denial. He accepted wholeheartedly the barren fact that he is finally initiated into this secret, Da Vinci type organization. So he shaves his head fully, not succumbing to the idea of allowing his hair to grow extraordinarily long on one side, to flip it over to the balding part. Although he has a monstrous mole right in the middle of his nape, he manages to shave the roots around the mole so that no blood is ever shed.

For my part, I kinda looked at this scenario from a distance and have readied myself to the eventual fate. For sure I won’t be in denial and I won’t wear a wig. And hopefully, there would be no monstrous mole on my nape to spare myself from the trouble of cutting the roots around it.