Road Apples
March 16, 2009


No hair, even less dignity

By Tim Sanders

Last week I read Ned Hickson’s column on hot sauce and dignity. In his opening paragraph he said he was sprinkling hot sauce on dog poop in his backyard when he had an epiphany. That made sense to me. Once, because I am a writer, and because writers are always searching for new challenges, I ate an entire spoonful of wasabi sauce and suffered a debilitating epiphany. No, I didn’t put that wasabi sauce on dog poop, only on a sushi roll, but I still had an epiphany. My epiphany involved tremendously large beads of sweat breaking out on my forehead, and my eyeballs dropping out of their sockets and dangling on my cheeks until the steam escaped. I believe there was also some panting and more than a few bad words. Several other diners at that restaurant observed my epiphany, and my wife later told me they seemed to enjoy it. I do remember a smattering of applause as I staggered to the restroom. One lady came to the table and told my wife that she’d been eating there for two years, and had never seen a wasabi epiphany quite like mine. As it turned out, Ned was merely putting Tabasco sauce on that dog poop to discourage his dog, Stanley, from eating it, so Ned’s epiphany did not involve his eyeballs or his digestive tract, only his dignity.

I am a bit older than Ned, and have learned another truth about dignity. While things like hot sauce and dog poop may account for a fleeting loss of dignity, permanent loss of dignity and permanent hair loss go hand-in-hand.

I’ve been losing hair for several years, now. Oh sure, it’s my own hair, so I have a perfect right to lose it if I want to. The problem is that I don’t want to. Most guys don’t. Otherwise rational men insist on doing some really irrational things when they discover they’re molting. They are absolutely convinced those irrational things will fool people into thinking they have a really thick head of hair ... when what they have is just a really thick head. Here are some hair repair strategies, a few of which I’ve tried myself:


1. CAPS - The idea here is that, as long as you’re wearing a cap, nobody knows how much hair, or how much head, is under there. This is an excellent strategy, except that there are times when a cap isn’t appropriate attire; say, for instance, during church services or funerals. Or while skinny dipping. I only occasionally wear a cap, and then it’s not to cover my thinning hair, it’s only because I want to. No, really.


2. HAIR THICKENING SPRAYS - When these products first hit the market several years ago, I purchased a can to see how it would work on that growing bald spot on the back of my head. I selected a color which seemed like a good match and gave myself a healthy shot of hair thickener. The drawbacks were that the thickener spray is basically head paint, which will remain on your head and your hair until you go to bed at night, and in the morning you’ll find it’s relocated to your pillowcase. My wife realized just how undignified the stuff was, and threw my new hair thickening spray out. She said I’d be better off just sanding my head, buffing it, applying a primer, a couple coats of Rustoleum, and a final clear lacquer coat, just to protect myself against chipping and fading. She thought she was being funny.


3. COMB-OVERS - There are as many different styles of comb-overs as there are styles of hair loss. Donald Trump, for example, has a style of comb-over which starts in front, billows downward almost to his eyebrows, seems to work its way backwards for awhile, and finally sort of meanders off to one side. No one is sure exactly where his hair loss begins, but we can assume, given the extravagance of his comb-over, that the loss is massive. Men who’ve lost hair in back like the front-to-back comb-over, while those who’ve lost hair on top tend to prefer the side sweep. With the side sweep, hair is grown excessively long on one side of the head, and then combed across the top like so many strands of spinach on an exceptionally large hard boiled egg. Windy days play havoc with comb-overs.


4. PLUGS - If you’ve ever seen a man attacked by a woodpecker, you’ll understand why I’d advise against hair plugs. They look as though they’re painful, and most of the people I know who got themselves "plugged" became discouraged halfway through the process and gave up. Even if they finish the procedure, the result is: Joe Biden.


5. TOUPEES - The problem with hairpieces is that a) they do not fool the people who know you well, which will be about 99% of those you encounter every day, and b) men are very unrealistic about how foolish they look under their own toupees. We all know old guys who wear "pieces" and imagine that they look like Cary Grant, when in fact most of them look like Lou Grant with a gray Burmese cat perched atop his head. There’s nothing dignified about a toupee. Especially when the little flower girl shouts "PawPaw, take your hair off" during the wedding ceremony.


6. PIGEON DUNG - And to prove that sacrificing your dignity for a full head of hair is nothing new, in his 1654 British publication called "The Pathway to Health," author Peter Levens recommended the following: "Take the ashes of Culver-dung in Lye, and wash the head therewith." In those days a culver was what people today call a pigeon. Talk about undignified.


So I’m glad Ned has come to terms with his loss of dignity where dog poop and hot sauce is concerned. If I knew for a fact that the pigeon poop hair restorer worked, I’d probably give it a try. When it comes to a full thatch on my roof, a few fruit flies following me around would be a small price to pay.