My father-in-law is bald.  I don’t know any way to state that without just saying it…my father-in-law is bald.  He’s not a chrome dome.  He wears his hair in what I call a horse shoe haircut.  That is to say his hair grows on the sides and along the back and the top of his head has no hair.  Get it?  The hair that grows falls in a horse shoe pattern.

Now the reason I mention this is not to point out the obvious.  I mention it because he and I have had a little run around about his hair.  You see he grows the first layer (at the top of the horse shoe) longer so he can comb it over the bald spot.   Now if any men are reading this let me just tell you no one can pull that off, not even the sexiest man alive.  You might as well just take a razor and shave your head.  It looks better.  We are not fooled by the comb over.  You look like you are desperately trying to go back in time to the place where you had a full head of hair.  But you can’t go back.  You can try Rogaine, or that spray they sell on late night infomercials but when you’re  hairless it’s pointless.  Yet, my father-in-law is totally convinced he looks better with the comb over.

I cut my husband’s hair.  I have for years.  He wears a very simple short guy’s hair cut.  I am not a professional nor do I profess to be.  So when my father-in-law asked me to bring my shears and cut his hair I thought he recognized that you get what you pay for.  Well, I cut his hair.  It looked damned good too.  I cut the sides short and completely eliminated the comb over.  OMG!  He threw a fit.  He told me he wanted it to look like he had hair.  I looked him in the eyes and said “I can cut your hair, but I can’t perform a miracle.  If you have a problem with your baldness talk to God.”  My husband said it looked good.  My mother-in-law thought it looked good, but he was pissed.   The next time we went to Harrison to visit my in-laws I called my father-in-law to see if he wanted me to bring my shears.  “NO!  I don’t ever want you to cut my hair again!”  Now, I was the one pissed.  I mean my gosh, he wanted me to cut his hair so I did.  It wasn’t something I wanted to do.  I did it because he is my father-in-law, and he asked.  I knew he didn’t leave the house a lot, because my mother-in-law was restricted to a wheel chair and he stayed with her.  I was more than a little miffed that he wasn’t grateful for the favor I had done him.  Plus, as I said before, you get what you pay for.  Well, miffed or not we went on to Harrison, and I played it off like my feelings weren’t hurt.  I went through the motions with him, and mostly talked to my mother-in-law.

Well, about four or five weeks later we went to see them again.  My father-in-law’s hair looked just like it did when I had cut it a month ago.  I commented that perhaps his hair hadn’t grown at all to which he replied, “No.  It grows just fine, but the last time I went to the barber shop the guy I usually use wasn’t there so I saw a young female barber.  She cut my hair exactly like you did.”  I couldn’t resist so I told him “that’s because it looks better when it’s not combed over.”  You could have heard a pin drop.  It’s true though.  We have a friend who is the same age as Boppy.  He started to lose his hair in his early twenties.  He went ahead and just shaved his dome completely bald.  His wife insists that he tan year round so that his stubble doesn’t show through, and he does but the point is…he looks better bald.  Completely bald.  I have a brother-in-law who lost an arm in a tragic motor vehicle accident.  He shaved his head because with one arm it was just easier.  He looked better bald than he did balding, and he doesn’t even tan.

Bald happens.  Is it fair?  No. Fare is just what you pay to get on the bus.  It has no application in life.  My mother never had to shave her legs daily, but I do.  That’s not fair either.  Of course, I have a natural large bust and Mom doesn’t so I figure life is full of trade offs.  I would rather shave daily and have a nice rack, so I lucked out   The only problem is you don’t get to choose.  You’re just stuck with what you get.  Sometimes that is lucky and sometimes it is sucky, but you have to play the cards you’re dealt.  I can’t sugar coat my father-in-laws baldness any more than I can jump off a building and fly.  I was just doing my best with what I had to work with (which wasn’t much), and there was no gratitude at all.  I even asked him when I started to cut his hair, “what do you want?”  The answer was, “I just want it cut.”  Well by God, that is what I did.  I cut that shit off.   I guess in a way I truly lucked out, because he has held on to that “you will never cut my hair again” statement for years.  I didn’t want to cut it anyway, so I kind of won. 

I’ve never been attached to my hair before.  I think of it as an accessory, and it is constantly changing.  I have had it about every color in the book.  I’ve had black hair, brown hair, auburn and platinum.  It has been very, very short and really, really long.  Hell, in the eighties I even had a mullet.  I just really don’t care that much about my hair.  I have come to believe that is because I have more than a dozen thin strands holding the whole “do” together.   So for those of you who are so attached to your hair that you can’t even give up the few strands on top I say, “forget about it.  You are not fooling any one other than yourselves.”   If I ever find myself losing my hair I want you all to know that I intend to shave myself bald.  There you go.  It is in print now, so you can hold me to it.  I might tan year round though, so the reflection on my dome doesn’t cause any accidents when I drive with my top down.  It seems like the right thing to do.