The Benefits of Being Bald

(image via wikimedia)

Some kid who isn’t my daughter tried to make fun of my baldness the other day, and I told him to stick it.  In the past, I might have been a little self-deprecating about his comments.  This time, however, I made fun of that coiffed punk.  I made fun of him for the time he wastes staring at himself in the mirror.  I mocked him for the amount of money he spends on hair products.  I mocked him for the time he wastes searching for these hair products and getting his hair styled.

I like being bald.  Being bald is easy, and it frees up my mind for other things.  Once a week I spend (maybe) ten minutes with a clipper at a ½’ setting, and if I make a mistake nobody notices.  I don’t need to check my hair in the mirror.  Now I can use mirrors for important issues, like hair in the nostrils/ears and food in my teeth.

I first noticed my receding hairline when I was 28.  It was a demoralizing moment, I admit.  I was strolling through a convenience store with mirrors on the upper walls when I noticed thinning hair at the top of my head.  I had never seen my head at that angle.  Before that moment, I thought I’d had a full head of hair and I was proud of it.  I spent money and time on it, not because of vanity but because it was a rare positive physical attribute.  I’m not the most attractive guy or the richest guy or powerful guy or charismatic guy, so I needed my hair to make myself look like a reasonable catch.  Without my hair, all I had were my height, intelligence, and impeccable hygiene.

The best part of being bald is that I don’t have to worry about bad haircuts anymore.  My first bad haircut happened when I was three and my mom dropped us off at a barber shop that was next to a liquor store.  I was the youngest and the last of the three boys in our family to get a cut, and when the barber was done, I had an unevenly chopped diagonal bowl cut (bowl haircuts were hideous enough, but unevenly chopped and diagonal?), and my brothers had instant entertainment.  When she picked us up, my mom didn’t want to complain to a bunch of drunks with scissors, so we left and never went back.

When I was 14, I walked into a place called The Barber Shoppe.  I figured the barber had to know what he was doing because the word shop was spelled out in a fancy way.  In the middle of the haircut, the guy’s girlfriend burst into the shoppe, cussed him out, and broke up with him right there in front of me.  When she stormed out, the barber gave me a sheepish look, told me he’d be right back, and ran out.  I heard them arguing out on the sidewalk (that had to be a scene!), and I sat there for at least 15 minutes with the towel wrapped around my shoulders and the back of my neck itching.  I could have just walked out, but the cut obviously wasn’t done.  It would have looked funny.

The guy apologized when he came back in, but I didn’t ask him if he got his girlfriend back.  I thought it was impolite to ask about those kinds of personal matters, even if it was his (ex) girlfriend’s fault that I knew about their problems.  I’ve always wondered what happened to them.  It shall remain one of the great mysteries of my life.

After that, I was always paranoid something bad would happen while I was getting a haircut, and bad stuff kept happening, even when I was an adult.  One barber fell down as he cut my hair (nobody got hurt).  One female stylist flirted with me while she was working on my hair, and her boyfriend tried to fight me in the parking lot afterward (even though I hadn’t flirted back).

Another stylist started off by saying I had a perfectly shaped head.  At first, I thought he was flirting, and I was kind of flattered.  A few visits later, that stylist suggested clippers because I might like the clean look.  He knew he was going to lose me as a customer, but the guy was popular.  He’s still around, running a bunch of places so he never needed my business anyway.  What a stud.

Don’t get me wrong; I could grow my hair back if I wanted.  The receding hairline would be obvious, but bald wouldn’t be my defining characteristic.  I grow my hair occasionally just to prove that I can, but the way it grows back now is a problem.  With my receding hairline, I grow only on the sides, which gives my head a triangular look.  Nobody compliments a man for his perfectly shaped triangle head.  A round, ball head gets compliments, but triangles don’t.

I mean, I could grow my hair back without the triangle, but not without buying hair products and spending a bunch of time in front of the mirror.  If I did that, I wouldn’t be any better than the kid I just mocked.  And that would defeat the whole purpose of being bald.

*****

What do you think?  If you’re a guy, what else do you like about being bald?  Even if you’re not a bald guy, what has been your worst hair experience?