Lee Pitts: Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

I inherited two things from my father… his Case pocket knife and his balding pattern. I had to wait 64 years to get his knife but I received his baldness from the day I was born. So as to prevent shock, my mother kept my entire head covered as a baby but the two photos that exist of me as a child show that I was balder than a watermelon. If you’re still having trouble getting a mental picture, I’m a spitting image of FDR on a dime. Only with less hair than the coin has.

Your average human scalp has 100,000 hairs whereas mine has 12, give or take a dozen. I didn’t need my first haircut until I was six years old and even today I only require three haircuts a year. Even then the barber charges me the full tariff. I complained about this once and he said he wasn’t charging so much for cutting my hair as he was for finding it. An old barber joke, ha, ha. He said I don’t even have enough hair for a combover unless he used the hair growing out of my ears. I told my barber that just once I’d love to know the feeling of the wind blowing my hair in my eyes but my comedian barber said they’d have to be nose hairs.

I know, I know, I need to find a barber with better jokes.

I know it’s hard to believe but 50 years ago hats weren’t as popular as they are today. I started the rage because I wore one all the time. Usually a baseball cap. Now days you’ll probably see me wearing a Carhartt® beanie because my noggin is always frostier than the Queen of England on a Scottish morning in January. I still wear a ball cap, cowboy hat or beanie at all times, even at night, and this is the reason I don’t go to church, funerals or weddings, because you’re supposed to remove your headwear on such occasions. I wore one once to a Catholic funeral and the priest sought me out afterwards to tell me that he thought he saw an apparition or the second coming of Christ when I removed my hat, but it was just the glow from my chrome dome.

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