Long as God can grow it

I don't miss hair.

Supercuts™® misses my hair. That's $20 guaranteed it was getting every two months, including tip; not to mention another $5 I gave each time to the woman who runs the cash register and sweeps the hair. Not many give her a tip, I bet. And now that spigot is dry, my free-spending days over.

Give me a head with hair,
long beautiful hair. 

If they had thought this through, the haircutters at Supercuts©™ would have talked me out of clipping my hair clear to the skull. They would have refused to fish out the No. 0 blade, or lied and said it was broken. They would have applied the steroid cream themselves, to get my quarter-sized random bald spots to regrow.

Too late now. Cha – not! – ching!

Since shaving it all off, I have met people who don't know me any other way but bald. I have also come across old acquaintances who, bamboozled by this hairless masquerade, have looked right at and through me, without a second glance or — presumably — thought.

Give me down-to-there hair,
shoulder length or longer. 

I'm staying this way, most of all because it's easier. It is the logical conclusion to my personal grooming, which included getting my hair cut so short it rendered combing useless.

I wear slip-on shoes too, and I'd go barefoot if society and prudence didn't vilify it. Yeah, I'm lazy.

Bald doesn't look too bad on me. I mean that literally: I don't look so bad that family and co-workers are begging me to glue on hair ASAP. So, hearing no objections, I'm keeping it.

Baldness used to be bad, as in, there's something wrong with you. As in, you shouldn't be bald if you can help it.

One of my great uncles was bald — smooth and shiny as if he had never, ever had hair. I remember thinking — all other evidence to the contrary — something must be wrong with him. But I never asked what. How do you ask? How does a little kid ask?

Yul Brynner always looked like something was wrong with him. Of course, it didn't help that he played assassins and angry killer robot cowboys a lot of the time.

Flow it, show it,
long as God can grow it,
my hair.

Baldness must have landed Telly Savalas a lot of roles — for crazy, angry, rogue soldiers and cops and criminals.

The laugh of last resort on any sitcom or variety show was for a famously coiffured celebrity guest to become suddenly bald, the skin cap pulled down tight and glued pat. Remember! You howled at the nonplussed TV star, brought low by the worst possible indignation: Being bald.

Baldness is visual shorthand for cancer, and it's sad, of course, when someone loses hair who doesn't want or deserve to, who can't help it.

But baldness ain't so bad anymore, not that I can tell anyway. A lot more people than you think have gone bald by nature or will, just one of the curious things I noticed only while living the bald life.

This is the age of Aquarius.

Knotted, polka-dotted, twisted,
beaded, braided, powdered,
flowered and confetti'd,
bangled, tangled,
spangled and spaghetti'd.

No one seems to follow any fashion for hair anymore. To each, truly, his or her own. In family photos, hair used to place people squarely in a certain decade, or even within one half of a decade or the other. Everyone seemed to wear a variation of some celebrity's hair. No more.

Hair is a bangled, tangled celebration now, a personal firework. Riding the train to work has been to stand curbside at the parade of hair. Gargantuan afros; tightly braided ropes of hair, bundled into a ponytail; oh-so-carefully sculpted bodybuilder/Realtor®™helmets; long, straight, heavy hair, like the kind you see in hair care commercials; courageous comb-overs, crazy I-don't-care hair, no hair.

No one seems to model his or her hair on anyone else's. Harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust abounding.

To which I just have to say:

Giddy glup gloopy nibby nabby noopy la la la lo lo
Sabba sibby sabba nooby abba nabba le le le lo