Remember that guy in your class at school when you were about 10 or 11 who was already hairy. He was the one who hit puberty years ahead of everyone else. He looked like a 40 year old in a school uniform. They were easy to spot and I think that is why the schools would share them out. There was usually only one per year. And oddly they always seemed to have names that matched their hairiness.
The guy in my class was called Mark. The hairy dude at my friend’s school was called Vaughn. I was talking about this with another mate recently and he nodded knowingly, then confided to me that in his class, he was that guy. Gary has never really struck me as a hairy guy, but then I haven’t seen him with his shirt off.
Incidentally, how long to you think a bloke can be in a relationship before he asks his girlfriend to wax his back? Gary says the answer is one day short of two weeks and his girlfriend agrees.
But hair is a funny thing. Especially for blokes. You get it too soon and everyone notices it. You lose it to soon and everyone spots that as well. I knew this guy called Glenn whose hairline was receding before he even left college. I don’t see the problem with hair loss. If you’re losing it cut your losses. Well don’t cut, shave. NOTHING, is more tragic than a guy living in denial about his receding hair. The ones that have the bald patch on top but try to make up for it with longer whips round the edges. Or worse. The guy who is losing it all over but compensates by growing a little tuft at the front. That way, when he looks in the mirror all he sees is hair.
Don’t these men have anyone in their lives to say ‘BRIAN YOU SAD SACK. SHAVE YOUR FRICKENN HEAD!
The worst example of this hair loss denial. The follicly challenged granddaddy of them all, is the comb over. Thank god it seems to be dying out. Who was the genius that came up with that? ‘Sir you appear to have lost all your hair on top of your head so I suggest you grow the few hairs you have left on one side, really long. Then we can give you this waxy sludge to slick it down over your shiny dome. This will give the impression of a full head of hair.” BOLLOCKS! It looks stupid. People that have comb overs should be taxed extra. Or made to all live together so they are constantly being reminded how silly they look.
The amount of money spent on hair restoring products and fake hair implies that having a full head of hair is important to many men. Especially retired Australasian cricket players for some reason. Of all the fake hair option the hair plugs seem like the most ridiculous. One of my PE teachers had them and whenever he bent down to pick up a medicine ball you could cope a look at the work. Hundreds of little plugs of brown hair all perfectly spaced in neat rows. If you got close it was a bit like the view out the window of a plane over a pine plantation. Must have cost a bomb. Inserting 743 hair plugs would be a mind numbingly boring job. You would want to make sure you got paid loads for doing that. So what make a guy go to all that hassle and expense? Some people feel that a full head of hair implies virility or power. If that’s true how come the Marines have shaved heads? And kung Fu monks. Which Arnold Schwarzenegger do you think could kick more arse. Connan the Barbarian Arnie? Or Predator Arnie? Apparently they reckon Americans wouldn’t vote for a bald President. But what about Captain Jean Luc Picard? If it is ok to have a bald guy in charge of a space ship that boldly goes where no man with or without hair has gone before, then surely a chrome dome can run the USA.
Hair loss affects more and more people, as they get older. On the head anyway. But is it lost or just redirected? Because it seems to start growing out your nose and ears. I found a hair in my ear last year. I plucked that sucker straight out and immediately made ear hair security checks part of my monthly beauty regime. Since then a couple of others have tried to establish themselves and that’s got me worried. My granddad had hairy ears. Real hairy. They looked like long blonde pubes and they grew in clumps. I’m surprised he didn’t get grandma to plat them. If he had ever wanted to do the comb over he could have used his blonde ear hair. He would have looked like a really wrinkly elf from Lord of the rings. As a kid I couldn’t work out why he didn’t do anything about them. Why no one had told him. Maybe they tried but he could hear them because of the tangled mass of ear pubes stuffed in his head. But what worries me now is he might have started off like I have. Shocked and horrified and determined to rip those suckers out. But maybe they just kept on coming. Maybe he was eventually overwhelmed like those pommy soldiers in Zulu Dawn. Maybe he realised he could only fight on one front and decided to direct all his resources to the nasal area which looked pretty good right to the end. Or maybe he just didn’t give a toss. Old people can pretty much do what they want when it comes to hair. Some give up the fight others take the fight to the street. If a 16-year-old girl dyes her hair purple she’s a renegade. If a 76 year old does it, she’s Aunty Betty from Wanganui. And she is probably on her way home to her husband Albert, to platt his ear pubes.
