My Whole Hair Story

Hi Ya'll-

I got a haircut today. Just for the record, most people who are balding have to go for haircuts more often then people who aren't balding. This kind of sucks. I keep my hair short cause I have a big head and if my hair grows out it looks kind of weird I think. But if my hair is too short I look a little mental. I have like one week of 'good hair' before it grows out. I pay $10 for the haircut down the street but I think it should be discounted cause it's less work. It's like a razor all around boom done.

Since I lost my hair a lot of hair oriented stuff has changed. Stuff gets phased out. Shampoo eventually gets phased out. Gel gets phased. Hairdryers go away. Then eventually the comb and a brush. It's sort of a weird transistion but it is absolutely one of the best things that has ever happened to me.

However, when it first started happening it freaked me out totally. Freaked me out to the point where I signed up for Hair Club for Men. Here's what happened. This is sort of a long story so feel free to stop reading now of course.

I was working in a bookstore called Encore Books (now out of business) and living at home. I was probably 24 years old or something. I was very concerned about my hair and I kept seeing infomercials for Hair Club. It was the guy getting out of the pool. The guy in the convertible. The guy with the chicks. Before and after photos etc. All happy happy.  I was feeling particulary insecure one day and made an appointment.

I go in and this hot chick comes out and she tells me how great it is that I'm doing this now -while I still have hair. Because after I lose more hair people will 'know'. So I sign up and give them every cent I have in the world. $3500. Ouch. They take a hair sample and a few weeks later I go back. And basically this is what it is. They take your side hair (strong hair) and braid it to a tight braid all around your head. Then they take this mesh hairpiece and basically 'anchor' it to your side hair so it holds tight on top of your head. Not sure if that explains it well but that's what it was.

Anyway they do this to me and now I have this thing on my head which is WAY more hair than I ever had. Totally 90210 hair.  It takes them a while to style it, they tell me how great I look and then I leave and go home. I almost crashed my car checking it in the rear view mirror every two seconds. I showed my parents and a couple friends and they were all sort of like, 'If that's what makes you happy... go ahead.'

I go to sleep and remember feeling weird because I didn't feel naked. And I kept touching it. Anyway I wake up in the morning and I had to go to work cause I opened the bookstore in the morning. I take a shower and try to style my hair. But the hair looked NOTHING like it looked the day before. It was this big matted tangled mess on my head. I couldn't get a comb through it. I couldn't make it look normal in anyway. It was like a hair sculpture. I kept adding more gel thinking that would help. Then the obvious dawned on me... if I feel self-conscious about my natural hair, I'm going to feel 10x more self-conscious about this thing on my head!

I wake up my parents and tell them how I made a terrible mistake and I needed this thing off of my head immediately. The problem was it was seriously totally attached to my head through this braid. My dad and I got out the scissors and had to cut it off. So now I had this weird missing hair line around the side of my head and and it was cut really short on top but kind of long on the sides. It was a total mess. 

But I went to work that day and the heaviness of craziness about my hair was completely gone. I felt great. My hair looked absolutely terrible and freakish but I simply didn't care. I knew I did what I could do to fix the problem and now I was free!

From time to time it still sucks to be bald but that $3500 was the best money I ever spent cause I learned such an amazing lesson from it.  And gained strength from it. I knew there was nothing I could do about what was happening so I just let it go.  I wonder if I had a toupee on right now who I might be. I'm not sure who that guy would be but it just have wouldn't been me. I feel fortunate to be free in this way. I know how hard it is to lose something you love and I know guys sometimes try to fix the problem and that's cool. But it would have never worked for me.

Felt like sharing.

ok bye!

tOdd