Going Bald

I am going bald.  In fact I have been going bald for something like 15 years.  Contrary to what I have heard I am not going bald in the manner of my maternal grandfather, who never really went bald, but in the same pattern as my father.  I am going bald much more slowly but I expect to get there in the end.  This pattern advances from the sides of the forehead in a looping pattern to isolate an island of hair above the middle of the forehead.  This is presumably because of the extra testosterone that is produced in this area.  I'm not sure if this is a particularly bad or good way to go bald, I suppose at least I can see it well enough to not deny it is going on.  Pattern 5, stage 3.

 I think balding, like most parts of aging, happens in relatively short jumps interspersed within longer periods of stability.  All of a sudden your knees hurt, or your hangovers are terrible, or you start listening to National Public Radio (I now experience all of these).  Three years ago I was being asked for my identification when buying alcohol to ensure I was over 21.  This has now completely stopped.

My balding advance has unfortunately now become somewhat unsymmetrical, my left conquering more scalp than my right.  There isn't too much worse for human beauty than non-symmetry (other than disease and gross fatness) and so I should probably not emphasize this new development.  I have thought for some time that the most important thing about going bald is not to fight it, not to try to disguise it.  Don't cover balding areas with wisps of long, fine hair.  I used to have long hair at times until I was twenty-seven, and not since.  It is better to have a shaved head than the long but scraggly remnants of a rockers' teenage barnet.  This may well be simply because of the failed attempt to fool someone, one of the reasons I don't like make-up on women.

I don't really mind going bald.  I don't consider it a tragedy of lost youth, just one of the many signs that I am getting older.  Women say they don't really mind (but then they also say that the most attractive thing in a man is a sense of humor and that size doesn't matter, two very kind lies) and I better get used to it, signs of aging are going to happen for the same amount of time I have been alive so far.

I still get a haircut with scissors rather than buzzing the whole thing, which is the haircut that reduces the appearance of balding the most, because there is only a limited amount of time for this to not look silly.  Since my darling, and honest, wife says I look like an egg with a buzzed head and no facial hair you should get used to seeing me with this scraggly, red beard.  Unless I lose forty pounds.