I am a balding, middle aged man. I look like my father, who is a very spry senior man, who has been bald since the first time I remember seeing him. My brothers are bald, and my paternal grandfather was way bald! To be in this family is to be a bald man. I knew this when I was a child, and my uncle, my dad’s brother who was also bald, told me that I needed to grow my hair long before it’s too late. We all knew it was coming. And I did grow my hair very long for a period of time in the late 90’s.
Around the age of thirty, I started to notice that things were beginning to thin out on top. I wasn’t too worried about it. But the year that I was engaged and leading up to our wedding, I did use minoxidil to keep what hair I had. It was an act of vanity as I wanted to look as youthful in the ceremony and pictures as possible. Somewhere around forty, my hair just took off for the hills. I started wearing a ballcap, not because I was ashamed of my head, but because one Summer I got an awful sunburn on the top of my head, and now I can really feel how cold winter winds can be.
I say all of this because haircuts are an odd conundrum for the balding man. What hair I have left still grown and needs to be cut and shaped. Yet the quantity of hair I have is significantly less than the average head. I had a barber. He was a good man. But I began to notice that what used to take him thirty minutes to do, was now taking ten minutes to accomplish. And I could tell he was trying to stretch it out.
That is why I started cutting my own hair with a shaver. Sure, I save money, but now is a chore I need to do every three months. The shaving part is easy; cleaning up all the little hairs is a pain in the butt. (My father still sees a barber, but I know he goes for the social aspect.) I have gotten pretty good at it. Start to finish, including cleanup, about thirty minutes.
I have thought about growing out my hair, my kid wants me to do it, but I don’t think I’m the type of guy who can pull off bald on top, long in back. Besides, I already had long hair.
