I still remember the first time someone explicitly pointed out my own hair loss to me. It was my second year in University and I would study mathematics with my friend Rob down in an area where a bunch of Rob’s friends hung out. Rob had already been at the University for a couple of years prior to me, so he had a clique that he hung out with.
I didn’t really much like that clique.
In particular there was this one fellow–a really cheeky SOB–that never had anything better to do than be an A-rate prick. He was one of those guys that always had a wise-crack comment up his sleeve, you know, the type that you always had to be ready with wise-crack comments of your to counter with.
Anyway, there were some cuties that would occasionally hang out with us, and one of them in particular I was trying to work up the courage to ask out. One day, the cheeky SOB comes along and sees me sitting with her. She and I were in the same math class and we were working on an assignment together. I was helping her solve a math problem dealing with differential equations, so I was talking about some variable that was growing larger fast with respect to some other variable. Cheeky SOB then makes the following wise-crack, “This variable can’t be moving faster than your receding hairline.”
Now, you have to understand that up to this point, I hadn’t even really consciously become aware of the fact that my hairline was receding. I had just as much hair, if not more than in the folliwing pic.
Me before I started to lose my hair
So cheeky SOB, whom I might add, had a hairline that was about 1.5 inches away from his eyebrows, totally took me by surprise with this comment.
There I was, cutie by my side and grinning monkey-face nodding his head in satisfaction, and I blew it. No comeback. I just sat there with what was probably a bewildered look on my face and didn’t respond.
Grinning nodding cheeky SOB monkey-face sensed victory, since I was usually able to put him in his place without a lot of effort. He smelled blood, and went in for the kill. “Dude, you should, like, shave your head and just get it over with. Your receding hairline moved an inch since my last sentence. You can play soccer on your forehead now.”
Now grinning nodding cheeky SOB monkey-face crossed his arms, and continued to grin and nod even more. By the time I came to my senses it was too late because grinning nodding cheeky SOB arms-crossed monkey-face and the girl were both laughing at me.
At this point I suddenly realized that I had indeed noticed something slightly different about my appearance over the last year, but it was at the subconscious level. Monkey-face had finally crystallized it for me. I was devastated at the thought and the prospect that I was going bald. I had this reverie, right in the middle of that situation, and when I snapped out of it I finally responded. I said, “At least I have a forehead. You #$%!ing cro-magnon. Remind me to bring an industrial strength weedwacker to to school tomorrow to help you with the overgrowth on your face.”
I remember this conversation vividly, as if it were yesterday. Anyway, I never did ask the girl out. The incident was too humiliating for me at the time. When I look back now at my own pictures from back then I think I was an idiot for letting it get to me as much as I did. And that makes me think perhaps 10 years from now I’ll look at my pictures today and feel the same way. Or perhaps they’ll have solved this crappy hair loss problem and we can all go about our business.