Entertainment For Lively Minds
And so it begins
I went for a haircut today. Not an unusual event in itself, I do the same every couple of months, but this time was different. My barber is Turkish so I have the added treat of getting the hairs inside my ears singed off with a flaming metal wand and parts of my face near the hairline are shaved which I hadn't previously considered suitable zones for the razor, but this time was different. The barber who cut my hair was an elderly gent whose services I have used before; he's very deft with the cut-throat razor on the back of my neck, but this time was different.
This time, during that bit at the end where they show you the back of your head, as if you could say anything about it at that stage, my barber slapped what is now the undeniably thinning area around my crown and laughed, 'I didn't do that bit!'
Sigh I will be 43 years old in a couple of weeks time and had thought that the baldness fairy had chosen to give me a pass to luxuriantly coiffeured old-age. I didn't really believe it; I've been trying to avoid that reverse reflection of the top of my head for a couple of years now, but now it is undeniable. I am indeed drifting into the arena of the slappy. By next Christmas I expect to completely hairless except for two small tufts above my ears.
And for some reason I still gave the bastard a tip.
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As Harry Hill would say
I first knew I was going bald when it started taking longer and longer to wash my face in the mornings
So...
...did he ask you about football or the weather?
Time to switch
to a Number 1 crop as your chosen hairstyle, then.
I have been 'rocking' this particular look
since 1990 even though my hairline is significantly lower than the Mekonesque level of many nu-combover merchants (Jude Law, looking straight at you, baby). A pal of mine yet believes that his remaining clumps of black hair are a totem to ward off the inescapable fact that a rostrum photo of his barnet would look like a line drawing of an incandescent light buld. Denial - it's not just a river in England, you know.
Number 1! Hah!
Is that all? I take a razor to my head every two days and enjoy and all over smoothness that others look on with envy.
Or so I tell myself.
I was sitting outside a bar in Chicago...
... several years ago with a friend of mine named Larry (a fellow Caucasian) who started shaving his head when he went bald. Anyway, we were enjoying a beer or three when this huge, bald, black chap walks past, looks at Larry, stops, walks back up to us and says to Larry "hey man - nice look" and then continued on his way.
I started going thin on top at 27. I go for a #1 every couple of weeks, but I've yet to build up the courage to take a razor to my bonce.
A #1 every couple of weeks?
I should see a doctor.
(sorry)
Baldness
is definitely okay these days. Time was when a chap lived in mortal fear of losing his mane, and having to resort to the Nobby Stiles, Robert Robinson or Arthur Scargill comb over strategy. Go for a number one next time, you feel all the better for it.
Incidentally I have the same coverage I had when I was 3 years old, but it has the consistency of wire wool and I wish the bloody stuff would fall out to be honest.
The real kick in the teeth
comes when you go to a wedding or similar function where cameras are in operation. You check yourself in the mirror before you go and think that you've enough on top for civilised company.......and then the photos come out! That's when you know how bad it really is.
Hope this has helped.
On the bank's CCTV
That balding guy's got the same jacket as me.
Fattening
I keep finding photos and CCTV images of a fat, old bloke wearing the same clothes as me. Must be some kind of defect in the manufacturing or image processing.
When reality bites
I remember my Dad telling me that he first realised he was losing his hair when he was sitting on a bus and some schoolkids called him baldy as they got off. Up to that point he was blissfully unaware.
I am now 54 and first noticed the inevitable thinning when standing in my bathroom doing the morning ablutions and 2 mirrors accidentally alligned in such a way that I could see the back of my own head. At least it wasn't some kids calling me baldy.
When reality bites part 2
Coincidentally, I helped my 14 (nearly 15) year old son have his first shave today. His bumfluff moustache finally had to go. Perhaps my hair is transferring to him ina strange way.
My hairdresser
My hairdresser (who's very good admittedly) upped her fee by €5 because she said I had 'too much hair' – i.e. it was too thick.
Obviously this isn't a good subject to complain about among men of a certain age. Still …
Hairdresser?
I think you'll have to remind us all what a hairdresser is. It's a long time since I've been to one of those.
An extra €5?
That's a 50% increase round these parts!
Watch should kill this thread now
..before we get spammed by Pfizer, (and yes, I know they don't make hair products).
There Is No Alternative
I worked with a chap who was tonsorially Art Garfunkel, with the receding hairline, bushy curly hair at the back and sides, and a bushy beard. At the point of this tale, he was around 30. He did look a fair bit older because of the hair and bushy beard.
One day when he wasn't working, he had popped into the office with his wife (who is the same age as him), and her friend, another lady in her late 20s. One of my team, a 20-year-old with a keen eye for the ladies, asked me "Is that Barry's daughters in with him?". After I had wiped the mouthful of coffee off my screen and keyboard, I decided I had to pass on this question. I did so the following day. Barry was appalled, then he laughed, and he came in the next day with his head cropped to Number 2 and his beard cropped to Number 4. He looked at least 10 years younger, overnight. His wife was also delighted.
*Some names in this story may have been changed*
My old man was bald at 27...
...and around the age of 25 I thought that was it, got a crew cut and waited for the inevitable. Apart from old ladies moving away from me at bus stops, nothing happened. Turns out I inherited my maternal grandfather's gene. My kid brother wasn't so lucky. My Dad looks a bit young for seventy and they are sometimes mistaken for brothers. My brother is 35.
Science nerdiness
If you read the big population studies, it turns out baldness is mostly inherited via the maternal line. I remember a geneticist saying that the best guide to what you'll look like in 25-30 years' time is your mother's brother.
Hmmm
My mother's brother looks like one of The Proclaimers. Both of them, actually.
You could start a tribute band together
Called The Disclaimers or The No-Claimers.
She doesn't have a brother...
...only two sisters. Very Chekovian. I only bear a slight resemblance to one of them...
To be fair
He was only talking in terms of baldness. I'm not sure which other traits are maternally inherited.
in my case
This is true. Despite my screen name, I am male and bald. My Uncle, now deceased, is the person I most resemble in the family.
What...
you're dead?
Sorry.
not last time I checked
.
A slaphead writes...
There is a particular gene on the X chromosome that greatly influences whether you'll go bald, and therefore, because women have two X chromosomes, there's a greater likelihood of it coming from the mother, but it certainly doesn't have to.
If your father is bald, your own chances of going bald are signficantly higher.
For what it's worth, my mother's brother has a full head of hair at sixty. My father went bald at 21, I went at 17. Annecdotes are not, of course, data.
A pedant writes
Ah, but men only inherit their X-chromosomes from their mothers (if they inherit X-chromosomes from their fathers, they're girls).
You can prove anything
with facts...
You're right, of course, and I should have phrased it much better; the point I was trying to make was that the mother's genes are not the only determining factor.
oh dear
my daughter are going to be disappointed
Not entirely reliable
My mother's brothers were tonsorially luxuriant. One still is.
Approaching 40 I look like a billiard ball, which is a touch irksome given that I had hair most of the way down to my arse at 22 and would like to have kept it. With a beard it was great for scaring off Jehovah's Witnesses ("Sorry, not interested - I'm a Satanist.").
I've kept the goatee though, and now I look like Ming the Merciless with a liking for pies.
I'm hanging in there
I've receded at the temples but I still have hair. The hairdresser suspiciously never used to show me my crown, so I made him and I was relieved to see there's nothing to worry about. Yet.
You're 43, baldness is fine.
I was 16, and still at school. At least you kissed a girl before experimenting with weird combing techniques.
Number 1 is your friend...
I agree
I was 17 and I allowed it to affect my confidence quite significantly.
Eventually, however, you just get the fuck over yourself.
Of course, there's a cure!
The slight catch is, said cure consists of castration before you reach puberty - no testosterone equals no baldness.
Of course, apart from the fact this advice comes too late for you, it would also have one or two minor downsides to it.
43 and still luxuriantly tressed.
But with rather a lot of Arctic Blonde highlights round the temples.
And my nasal hair's going grey as well. And I have to shave my eyebrows to avoid the Dennis Healy look.
Lenny please...
...speaking as a dental patient, please also trim the nasal hair. Please. Set an example to your profession.
The nasal hair is always neatly trimmed..
And I always wear a mask so people can't stare up my nose.
Surgical scissors are dead good for nasal hair, BTW.
Let it be said
that a bald head is really a solar panel for a sex machine.
Well, that's what I tell myself anyway...
And a beer gut
is a fuel tank for a sex machine etc. My machine now has two fuel sources.
Ah, a hybrid...
Have you tried selling this to Toyota?
They need a hand.
Who needs a six pack...
... when you can have the whole keg?
Who loves ya baby.
Lost mine at an (sob) early age.Shave it off,grass doesn't grow on a busy street.Get ready to bump your head a whole lot more so buy a hat!
Can I just say that this is the best thread I've read
For ages?
AND I've still got loads of hair so none of the above applies to me. Ha! Ha! I win! I win!!
A welcome win?
If your screen name stands for Ipswich Town FC, then surely you should call it a draw?
Arghh!!
It burns! It burns!!
No, *I* win
I have to go for a hair cut because my hair gets too thick rather than because it gets too long.
I definitely win :P
(I get a feeling that, were they still available, I'd be receiving many a down arrow for this post...)
I think you'll find
I and the other slapheads win because we've each saved several billion just by shaving our own bonces.
I think I'd rather go bald
than the gradual loss of eyesight which seems to be my response to old age. Can't read a cd cover now without specs - drives me nuts.
Just an outside (i.e. female) point of view here...
Nowt wrong with a bald head. Plenty right, in fact.
No-one has ever been taken in by a comb-over or similarly in-denial hairstyle... if your hair's thinning, just take a razor to the whole thing (or go for a #1).
Looks much much much better, honestly.
Are you sure Hannah?
Look at this handsome fellow...
ROWR!
I take it all back. The combover is HOT. Yummy yummy yum.
Great description
I worked in a business where one older chap had such a bizarre combover - from the back of his head to the front - that it was said the first thing he did when he got out of bed was to comb all the hairs up from his arse before he put on his underpants..!
The Japanese have a great expression for this:
バーコード髪
(apologies to any Japanese speakers if this is not quite right)
Barcode hair - especially good for those with wispy dark fronds scattered over a vast slappy expanse. Clearly because said dark strands look lke a barcode plastered across such a head. My dread of looking like such a berk meant that I took a razor to my head as soon as possible.
My hair
I had crap hair. It was straight, and parted like a 1950s schoolboy. There was nothing I could do with it. When it started to fall out I went the radical route, a complete shave, and honestly it was the first time my hairstyle (or lack thereof) was satisfactory.
And, no more talking about football and holidays with barbers!
Plenty of it, but grey
I still have a full head of hair and have to get it cut regularly because it starts growing outwards and gets bigger and bigger until it is encroaching on 'ridiculous bouffant' territory. However, it is now completely grey and has been heading that way since my mid-thirties. I have never considered dyeing it for a second, though - that would be plain weird. As soon as it starts dropping out, the posts above have convinced me that the all over number 1 is the way to go.
Distress
At the less than tender age of 51 (birthday last week on 24th, coincidentally when most people posted to this thread - and don't worry, your cards all got here safely), I find it immensely distressing that my nasal and ear hair grows more than that remaining on my head, albeit in a variety of attractive grey and ginger hues.
A constant and ongoing battle.
Incidentally, Fraser, I love the new Swahili captcha. I looked my phrase up on babelfish and it says " your testicles look like those of a rampant hippopotamus"