Baldies Just Grin And Bare It

Some of my impish friends have been using their talents to diagnose the current condition of my head.

“Baldo the Wonder Dome” is the favorite so far. Running close behind, however, is “follicly challenged” and “scorched-Earth scalp.”

Being bald is all about learning to live with hair-assment.

The other day one of my shaggy comrades placed a disturbing health report on my desk.

“Baldness is Associated with Higher Heart-Disease,” read the bold headline at the top of the page.

My workspace seems to be a magnet for anything to do with hair loss. Go figure.

According to the Harvard study, “researchers found men with high blood pressure and balding at the crown of the head had a 79 percent greater risk of heart disease than men without hair loss.”

Just reading that made my blood pressure skyrocket dangerously.

I used to think the biggest risk from being a biological skinhead was looking in the mirror and getting cornea burn from forehead glare. Now I’ve got to fret about blowing an aorta.

DOCTOR: “Oh, oh. I think we got to Mr. Clark too late. He looks BOA.”

AMBULANCE DRIVER: “BOA?”

DOCTOR: “Bald on arrival.”

This so-called millennium hasn’t gotten off to a very rosy start for us chrome domes.

A few days after we published a story about the above Harvard study, another hair-brained research project made the paper.

This one came from Yale. Apparently there’s a competition going between the nation’s two leading Ivy League schools to see which is better at irritating the bald.

The Yalies questioned 60 men and 60 women. They concluded - get this - that bad-hair days cause poor self-esteem.

Men, the study revealed, “are more likely to feel less smart and less capable when their hair stuck out, was badly cut or otherwise mussed.”

Well, boo-hoo. Pardon me if I don’t feel the pain of any weenies whining about bad hair.

Please direct your attention to the upper half of my column photograph.

You are now looking at something worth whimpering about. This is not a bad hair day. This is what experts call “bad hair life.”

Don’t complain to me how the wind blows a few of your precious locks askew. The last hair I found out of place was in my omelet during Sunday brunch.

It would be swell to have hairs wandering about like lost lambs in a thicker woods. What I have are shell-shocked survivors of a great Hair War that broke out on my dome back in college.

Just like in Vietnam, it looks like Agent Orange was sprayed to turn my scalp jungle into a defoliated wispland.

“Actually, you should blame your mother,” advised Marianne LaFrance, the psychology professor behind the Yale bad hair study.

I called LaFrance on Sunday to express my contempt for her frivolous research. The New Haven, Conn., woman indicated I wasn’t the first hair-impaired person to express such a point of view.

According to LaFrance, we inherit our hair traits from our mother’s lineage.

Sure enough, my grandfather Pugh’s head consisted of about six long thin side strands. He liked to comb these threads over in a fruitless effort to cover a pie-plate sized bald spot.

My father’s side of the gene pool was even more shallow. His head was smooth enough to rent out for a helipad.

But don’t talk to me about any quack cures.

Toupees are vain and look silly. Hair weaves are just as phony and require even more work. Plugs are expensive and painful. Drugs are marginally effective and come with weird side effects like erectile dysfunction.

I may have a bad hair life, but at least it’s real.

And as you can see from my photo, I’m content enough to grin and bare it.