I’m bald by choice.
The other option is sporting a receding hairline and bare spots. A few unruly follicles and cowlicks might have held out for an unplanned and unlikely growth spurt, but that was never really in the cards. Pulling the trigger to shave my head didn’t come with any sort of fear and loathing. At least not in Denver. I never dragged a razor over my scalp in Las Vegas.
Some bald guys are hat wearing fashionistas. I don’t think this is a poor decision. Anybody that sunburned their head will emphatically promote the practicality of cranial coverings. Outside of baseball caps and winter beanies, I do not own headgear classified as apparel or an accessory item. I’m sure I could pull off a fedora, but I’m more of a “what not to wear” kinda guy. My focus pivots around practicality not Prada.
A hat can act as a buffer zone.
At 6 foot 5 inches I’ve lacerated, bruised, and otherwise traumatized my grape more often than I can recall. There are great advantages to height, but my skull scarring attests to its pitfall as well. It’s the unsung villain of being tall. No adult male under the United States average height of 5′ 9″ gives a hoot, though. They discount our dome damage while we covet their leg room.
My favorite is the doorway that’s not vertically adjusted for its diminished clearance due to a bottom step. None was more damaging than a New York State Emergency Management mobile command center that I stepped into. It seriously needed a “duck” sign on its only door. I’m fairly certain this was an OSHA violation of some sort. They failed to management this potential emergency.
This was a trailer packed with a wide array of sophisticated, high-end technology, but woefully lacking regarding human anatomy integration. At least for us above the national height average. To make matters worse, the trailer doorway was constructed with aluminum.
Aluminum trailer doorways are incredibly thin material. This finely smelted metal is also, not surprisingly, quite sharp. It’s like lining an entranceway with dull paring knives. Not necessarily dangerous unless an appropriate amount of pressure is applied. Jamming my noggin into the top of the 6 foot doorframe upon entrance is considered an appropriate amount of pressure. I now know this.
To say it hurt understates the obvious.
The wound site bled and oozed for days. I’m not sure a hat, functional or fashionable, would have made a difference. The injury was so personally significant, I despised anything related to New York State or City for approximately three years. I almost developed a post traumatic stress disorder reaction whenever I saw a trailer. If it wasn’t for beer cans, I might still hate aluminum based on this experience alone.
Even before this cranial catastrophe I’d considered cans the new bottles. Cans take up less refrigerator space, cans are lighter than bottles, cans cool quicker than bottles, you can drink from cans poolside without property management recourse, and nobody ever shattered a can after accidentally knocking it off the counter. Cans provide a safer and more convenient alternative.
For this very reason I believe beer, when consumed from a can, is largely a therapeutic practice.
Over the last three years, beer cans and beer consumption desensitized me to aluminum. As a matter of fact, I’m not afraid of any kind of metal anymore. Machete’s and swords don’t even phase me. Drinking beer from a can has truly been a cathartic experience that I will continue into the foreseeable future.
I still swig beer from a bottle or tap on occasion, but the aluminum can possesses curative properties the other two sorely lack. However, I made significant progress through transference. By pouring a beer can into a frosted pint glass, I can associate aluminum’s psychological restorative properties onto this new vessel. Glass, pint or otherwise, can heal.
Subsequently, this heightened state of cognition regarding beer poured into a glass shifted to other beverages.
For several months I researched this phenomenon by drinking bourbon from a glass. It’s almost a double whammy as I pour the bourbon from a glass bottle into a glass tumbler. Further research is necessary to ascertain the merits of other liquors and wine.
I hoped by the end of these studies I would reach a level of self-actualization. Through undaunted quasi-clinical trials with alcohol, aluminum cans, frosted pints, and glass tumblers, I yearned to discover the fulfillment of my hidden talents and potentialities. Abraham Maslow would be so proud.
However, as I was just about to complete this groundbreaking personal discovery, an incident occurred. While stepping up onto a landing at my in-laws house, I inadvertently rammed my bare head into the wooden doorframe. Interestingly, this coincided during some final field research with aluminum beer cans and glasses of bourbon. A causal effect is yet determined.
This step had been in the house as long as I’d been in the family. I crossed over this landing many times. For some unknown reason on this particular evening I misjudged the step in accordance with my head clearance to the doorframe. Although it did not cut as deeply as the aluminum doorframe, the wood still managed to gouge a decent sized area, along with jamming my neck in the process. The headache added a cherry on top.
It appears that years of self-diagnosis, research, and therapeutic process may have been lost. They say whenever one door closes, another one opens. Just make sure you can fit through it before you take that next fateful step. Unless you’re that 5’9″ average height. In that case you can just go pound sand since your head is clear of any such abuse.