There are certain physical and social amenities that come with being a male. Efficient use of stadium bathroom facilities and never having to endure labor pain are two of the biggies. Then there’s the higher pay scale, goatees, comprehension of the Three Stooges, and the fact that the world is our erogenous zone. We can grow flabby and the patriarchal world doesn’t flinch. But all of these advantages come at a horrible price …
Our hair.
Not that most women wouldn’t go bald in a second if it meant a 15% pay raise and serious government funding for yeast infection research, but it’s different with men. For all of the feminine platitudes about Jean Luc Picard’s sexy bald head, every guy knows that women just say that either to soothe a bruised ego or to get the trash taken out on Tuesdays. The mere threat of this particular Genetics Tax coming due is enough to send most men into a frenzy, a state of mind ultimately quelled only by the purchase of a sporty red convertible.
We men are like this because we realize that, when it comes to the hair falling off our collective heads, it’s what other men think that’s really important. And, frankly, Captain Picard is just another aging Federation officer with a follicle deficiency.
As I look at Carter now, I feel his pain. The little man came into this world with a nice set of locks for such a young human. Through the first 4-1/2 hours of the Amy pushing during labor, it’s all I saw, this thin dark matte of hair on the top of an elongated skull. Carter’s hair turned heads and drew comments, not just from passing Patrick Stewart fans but from envious men in baseball caps. Now, just seven short weeks later, I find myself consoling my son during his daily fits of realization that hair is not forever. His cries are not for food or comfort, but for hair and lots of it.
Deep down, I knew this day would come. The black hair was the clue. All of the men in my family have been tow heads as a youth. My dad’s hair didn’t turn dark until college; my own head has now settled into a dirty blondish-red. Carter and his dark curls would soon part, ’twas destiny. But as any man would do, I held out hope that this young child was the Chosen One — He Who Will Not Go Bald, ending the curse of Adam and all of those comments from Eve about Jean Luc.
We first noticed the bald spots forming on the sides of Carter’s noggin. A formation of blank skin unlike any male-pattern baldness I’ve ever seen. The long streaks of hairless skin extended from behind the base of his skull up over the ears, like invisible eyeglasses propped up backwards on his neck. It wasn’t until Amy noticed, during a routine feeding, that the pattern suspiciously matched her hold on Carter’s head did I suspect the worst.
Egad. It was coming off with a mere touch.
The Baldness Crisis of 2000 only got worse from there. Carter’s head grew as smooth as his own bottom up above his forehead and in patches from ear to ear. As if taunting him, nature has seen fit to leave my boy with just a long dark strip bordering the nape of his neck. He’s God’s Mr. Potato Head with the beard snapped into the wrong hole. Despite much subtle rubbing by me to even things out, the stubborn baby hair is now trying to organize into a pony tail.
The ordeal shows signs of passing (however brief that reprieve may seem by the time Carter is 30). A peach fuzz coating has materialized recently. As blonde hair is wont to do, it is invisible to the eye, but not the touch. The late-morning cries from Carter are subsiding, but I know it is only a matter of time before he grows up and understands baldness isn’t something that will just go away like so much hip-clicking. No amount of Rogaine or plugs will avoid the inevitable. Baldness grows like a fungus, creeping its way throughout one’s life into widow’s peaks and monk’s halos that gleam when you sweat. It is a symptom present to some degree on every deathbed. Baldness is fatal.
Until that dark day, Carter and I must take solace in the advantages society will offer up as compensation. Enjoy middle-aged flabbiness. Accept raises whenever offered. Most of all, stock up on baseball caps like there’s no tomorrow.