There will come a day, and that day seems to be rapidly approaching, when I will bid farewell to the hair on the top of my head. (Incidentally, the hair on the other 95% of my body doesn’t seem to be going anywhere). I confidently intend to rip the band-aid off all at once with the assistance of a safety razor when the time is right. Yet the possession of a plan should not yet be seen as a sign of comfortable acceptance of the inevitable.

All the jokes I’ve made about comb-overs and toupees have come back to bite me as I realize that, as one’s body changes in ways that are permanent, obvious and out of control, there is a very palpable loss of identity. Physically, I’m becoming a new person, but I liked the old one just fine. I now find myself sympathizing much more with those men who will go to absurd lengths to look like they still have hair, even if they look far more foolish than if they had just let themselves be swept along by the tide.

There was a time when I decided the right way to act regarding this issue was to take a pill. Now I’ve decided to take the money I would have spent on pills and devote it to something more worthwhile. This condition should be taken not as a problem to be solved but rather as a lesson in one life’s universals- impermanence. Nothing lasts forever, even FANTASTIC hair.