*Note:  My family still hasn’t decided what we will do regarding our dietary dilemma.  For those of you who are wondering feverishly what we will eat, I must say that I’m flattered…and vaguely disturbed.  Rest assured; it will be the subject of a post or two or ten once we figure it all out.

So much for the Public Service Announcement—on with the post!

 

I fear my barber.

Not the man, so much—he’s a nice guy.  I fear what he represents.  You see, every time I go to see him, I know that it may be the time.  The time when he says, “You know, Michael…you’re getting pretty thin up here…it might be time to try something different.”

Different like…

moving my part six inches to the left?

getting a circa 1978 Toni Home Perm in the hopes that the fluffiness will hide my cranial deforestation?

installing solar panels in the bald spots and selling energy back to Edison?

My dad had a conversation like that with his barber.  As Dad tells it, he had gotten to the point of trying to work a three-strand comb over.  His barber put him in the chair, looked him straight in the dome and said, “Who are you trying to kid?”

It’s not that I’m bald.  I’m not even truly balding.  Yet.  But my scalp has gotten much less shy than it used to be, and I’m looking for hair gel with at least SPF 30.  It used to take twenty minutes to blow-dry my hair—now it’s dry before my hand reaches the towel.  It’s like each individual hair flipped a little tiny coin: heads I stay, tails I go.

There is a little red dot on my scalp, well back from my hair line.  There is no reason I should be able to see it, and yet…

Why does any of this matter?

I know it shouldn’t bother me.  So I’m losing hair—what’s the big deal?   I’m also packing on some pudge around the middle, and my knees crackle so loudly going up and down the stairs that it sounds like someone’s frying bacon.  I’m pulling 40, and my body is announcing that fact to the cosmos.

I don’t think of myself as a vain person, and movie-star good looks have not been a problem I’ve struggled with in life, so why do I care about the hair?  I think there are two reasons.  First, the hair loss, lovingly pointed out by the Wife of My Youth, was my introduction to the painful world of the mid-life crisis—a time in my life that does not bear repeating, and for which I desire no reminders.

Second, there’s nothing I can do about it.  I mean, I could do something about the pudge—I don’t, but I could—and that gives me a certain feeling of power.  The hair?  It just goes, no permission asked or granted.  In the absence of hair plugs (never!) or voodoo shampoo, I’m relegated to the role of spectator as my follicles fail.

“But Michael,” you may ask, “What does any of this have to do with ‘living a life worthy of the calling you have received?’  Frankly, it seems a bit shallow.”  You are correct, and this is my life.  Moments of depth and true inspiration swallowed up by mundanity and shallowosity.  Besides, that’s how God seems to work, at least in me.  He trains me for big things by using little things.  So much in life is inevitable.  If I can learn to deal with something as small as impending baldness with grace and trust in Him, perhaps I can learn to deal with the bigger inevitabilities in the same way.

Perhaps not.  But he seems to think it’s worth a try, and who am I to argue?

Just so you know, I don’t think about it every day.  Really, it’s just on barber days.