How to be Bald: Your guide to being “that one bald guy”
At a young age, I already knew it would eventually happen to me. I had hoped it wouldn’t be until I was at least 50 years old, but I knew it was inevitable. Alas, at the ripe age of 20, it happened. It began slowly at first, but it quickly became all that anyone could see when they looked at me. It enveloped everything that I was or tried to be. I soon became “that one bald guy.”
But there is more to it than simply losing your hair. It is a process that you must go through.
Step One: Denial
Fortunately, I passed through this stage before I had even begun losing hair. All of my grandfathers are bald, my uncles are bald, and my dad is bald. I had accepted that it would be part of my life long before it happened.
For the less fortunate, this stage consists of trying to hide the fact that you’re bald. This usually results in terrible life choices like hideous comb-overs, wasting money on expensive hair-thickening products, or even buying a dead squirrel to cover up the bare top of your head.
Gross. Just… please, no.
There are those who simply wear hats all the time, but then there’s this awkward moment when they take off their hat for a second and people get a glimpse of the Phantom underneath the mask. Inevitable double-takes and muffled chuckles are sure to ensue. Regrettably, some men never even move onto the next step.
Step Two: Acceptance
Finally coming to terms with the fact that you’re losing your hair is known as acceptance. Men who have accepted their balding head are most easily recognizable by a short-buzzed trim. Contrary to what those denial-ensnared men think, shorter hair looks better. Own up to it. Admit that you’re losing your manly mane and work the buzz-cut.
Now, while this looks less creepy than a toupee and shows that you’re not afraid to be a man, this doesn’t solve all of your problems. You still get badly sunburned all the time, but you can’t rub in sunscreen on your head because of the little bit of hair that still remains.
For those of us that don’t want to have the horseshoe-crown hairstyle until we’re old enough to be called grandpa, there remains one more stage.
Step Three: Shaving your head completely
It’s an odd feeling. You’ve had your hair shorter than ever before for a while now, but you can’t help but question your similarities to Britney Spears when you’re staring into the mirror while wielding the clippers. With one deep breath and a brief hysterical laugh, you let ‘er rip.
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Feels pretty weird, huh? You feel so exposed, but so daring. You’re a new man. You’re no longer that creepy balding guy that makes freshman girls wonder why a middle-aged, baby-faced man is in their English class; you’re a bad dude that people don’t mess with.
As the days go by, you realize that your new haircut is more than just a change of appearance — it’s a change of lifestyle.
The Bald Life
It takes you a couple of weeks to remember to change your shower routine so that you stop robotically pouring shampoo into your hand and then wondering what to do with it. You walk a little taller — well, literally shorter now that your hair doesn’t top you off — and now you know that when people stare at you as you walk by it’s because they’re thinking about how tough you must be instead of secretly laughing at the poor loser that can’t even keep a full head of hair.
The first time you walked by another guy with a shaved head, he gave you a nod like you were part of some elite group or something. A few days later, a buff guy with a shaved head walks by you and says, “You’ve got a great barber, man.” And thus, you enter the world of the shaved-head culture. It’s the official greeting of bald guys. It’s how we acknowledge our awesomeness while poking fun at the fact that we pretend that shaving our head was a decision when really we were left with no choice.
But there are drawbacks to being bald. There has to be.
The Downside
— I mean, like, in addition to losing your hair…
For one, it’s way colder than you thought it would be. You never realized how much hair actually insulated your head. You’re now the first to know when it’s raining or snowing.
Secondly, your conversations with people now only consist of three things:
1) asking if they can touch it (they are always grossed out, so don’t take it personally);
2) asking if you use shampoo or body wash (a valid question, but logically, why would you waste money on shampoo?);
3) endless bald jokes. Forever.
People are generally hesitant to joke about it for fear of you being extremely sensitive about it, so it’s best to just make the first joke and show them that it’s ok to laugh about it. Humor is often the best coping mechanism, because let’s be honest, you actually are self-conscious about your baldness. But just joke about it and enjoy the fact that you are unique. After all, God made very few perfect heads, and the rest he covered with hair.
Just be aware that some people will go out of their way to get in a good bald pun. Like my sister in her daily comic.
There are a few strange side-effects that occur with shaving your head. For example, I’ve never tried to convince anyone to shave their head. However, on multiple occasions, a friend or even acquaintance has excitedly messaged me or tagged me in a post on Facebook about their newly shaved head.
For some reason, they always assume that I’ll be proud of them or that I’ll be excited to have a bald friend. In a friendly tone, I congratulate them; I wouldn’t want to crush their spirits by telling them that I really couldn’t care less about what hairstyle they have. Besides, every group of friends can only have one “that one bald guy.” Otherwise, things get complicated.
Bald Benefits
So are there benefits to being “that one bald guy?” Of course! I’ve yet to do the math to see how much money I actually save by never spending money on shampoo or hair gel, but I like to believe that it’s a small fortune. Plus, I never have to worry about “helmet hair” after riding my motorcycle for a while. There’s no such thing as a bad hair day anymore.
But those might be the only benefits. I mean, I’m generally a glass-is-half-empty kind of guy anyway, so maybe I’m just biased. But being bald is still about as great as finding a hidden piece of candy in your cupboard and then biting into it just in time to realize that it’s probably older than you are.
For example, people think that you have tons of spare time now that you don’t have to dry and style your hair. Wrong. It takes forever to shave it every day to maintain the shaved look.
Halloween costumes become extremely limited. You can’t just do a crazy hair style to imitate something now. You’re pretty much stuck being Gru (Despicable Me), Megamind, Aang (The Last Airbender), and Mr. Clean for the rest of your life. Because let’s face it, you don’t look like this:
And, of course, your name and face no longer matter. From this day henceforth, you shall be known and referred to simply as “that one bald guy.”