It's Just Not Me

I’m still not quite sure how it happened, but once it happened the first time it was easier and easier to keep on going, so that’s what I did. As Bob Dylan so elegantly put it, “The only thing I knew how to do was to keep on keeping on.”

In hindsight it probably wasn’t one of my better decisions, but then who looks back at their good choices and thinks “You know, in hindsight that was a great move I made back then”? No, hindsight is best kept for those things we look back on with the clarity of a little more experience, and with the outcome and consequences in full and clearly focused view.

Then there’s the issue of Sheri’s thoughts about what I had done. She loved it. She’s one of those people who foolishly look back and thinks what I did was a great thing. She was happy with the outcome. She was thrilled with the new Lynbo. She wanted me to keep on keeping on and on and on. And that’s what I did for about three months.

Oh yes, it was easier to maintain. And yes, it was nice to be able to not obsess for those three months. It took quite a bit of getting used to, and I’m not entirely sure I ever did get used to it, but I was dealing with the ramifications like a good little soldier, a real trooper right up until I realized that the person I was seeing in the mirror just wasn’t me, no matter how hard I tried to make it so.

So I stopped. I don’t know if I will ever do this thing again, and I’ve started telling people this. I even had to have the dreaded heart to heart with Sheri to explain my current feelings on the matter, much to her dismay because she really did love it.

First, let’s back up a few months to the last week in August.

Sheri and I were in Michigan taking a break from the everyday hustle and bustle of our lives in Missouri and visiting her family who live there. When we visit, we stay in Spring Lake at a condo owned by her father and step-mother. It’s so nice to go there and have this wonderful place to hang our hats for a week or so. We always get lots of family time in, the nieces and the nephew usually come out and spent some quality time with Sheri and me, and it’s a very relaxing place to be. It doesn’t end up being one of those vacations where you’re just so busy going here and there and visiting this person and those people and having dinner with this part of the family one evening and then be expected for an early brunch with old friends or….. and on it goes until you feel like a vacation is needed from the vacation. No, these are really nice leisurely trips and we have always returned home feeling relaxed and rejuvenated.

Well, this last trip was shaping up to more of the same, which is good with Sheri and me. If it ain’t broke, you know. On our second night there, I decided I needed a haircut. My haircut decisions usually come to me this way. I never have been on a hair maintenance schedule of any kind except when I was in the Air Force, and even then I resisted and waited until my commander would make the decision (direct order) that it was time for a trim. I always wait until way after I start getting, and then stop getting, hints from family, usually from Sheri. Sometimes those hints would come close to the “hints” my Air Force bosses would give to me, but let’s get real here… I’m not in the military anymore, am I?

So anyway, back to the decision. I decided that it was time. Now here’s where things started to go in a different direction than all of my previous haircuts. I once allowed myself to be talked into a really short haircut, a buzz cut so to speak. No scissors, just those electric clippers that barbers use for trimming the back of the neck or sideburns. Some guys of course go for this kind of look all the time, but this was a first for me and I really didn’t dig it. It was quite some time before I got another haircut after that.

Here we were now on a Sunday evening in the condo overlooking the lake and I decided that this would be a good time for a haircut. Sheri had been after me ever since the clippers experience a few years before to try it again. She suggested it again on this night as the moon shone down happily over the lake, and this time I relented. Yes, the buzzing was about to take place again.

I positioned a chair in the middle of the kitchen and went in search for my beard trimmer. That’s right; it was to be by beard trimmer this time. Then she and I thought about the mess we were about to make, and started looking for a broom. No such luck. We had to find another way to keep from walking across a hairy kitchen floor every time we wanted something out of the fridge. In the end, I ended up sitting in the chair and leaning over one of those big throwaway aluminum roasting pans while Sheri stood behind me, then beside me, then on the other side of me, then in front of me, then back behind me again, all the while buzzing away at my hair.

I couldn’t even look.

When she was done and I opened my eyes, there in front of me in the pan that I was holding was what was once my hairdo. As a guy who has been losing his hair steadily for most of his adult life, I was surprised to see how much hair there was in that pan. I decided immediately and resolutely that what I was looking at looked better on my head than it did in that pan. I hated what I was looking at. But there it was in front of me whether I liked looking at it or not.

Now this is the way I think sometimes. I thought for a few brief moments about going down to the market in town and buying some of that candle-making wax, melting it on the stove, pouring it over my head, and sticking all that hair back into it one hair at a time, only a little more spread out so as to cover up the thinning spots and bring the hairline down my forehead just a little. Then I’d have the best of both worlds, right? Good hair when I wanted it, and just take it off when it got too hot for all that hair.

For a precious few seconds, this was a viable and intelligent option, obviously not taking into account some very important details. For that short amount of time I didn’t consider that pouring melted wax over my head probably wasn’t the greatest of ideas. I also hadn’t pondered how I was going poke in one hair at a time in the exact location and at the exact angle to create this wonderful Michael Douglas hairstyle before the wax hardened. It also hadn’t occurred to me what would happen when I went outside feeling all great and confident about my new look and the hot August sun started doing its thing on the wax. Ever leave crayons out on the sidewalk in the summertime? Ever see the movie “Teen Wolf”?

So, no wax, no poking in hairs, no Michael Douglas coif.

Instead, I had another idea, and this was the “looking back in hindsight” idea spoken of earlier. A few months earlier, in a restaurant in Springfield, I spotted a guy a few tables over who shaved his head and had a goatee to kind of off-set things, and I thought it looked good. Looked manly, you know. My brother-in-law Robert had this same look when we went out to California for my daughter Jessica’s wedding, and it worked for him as well. OK, so some guys can pull it off. I would never know unless I tried it, right?

So I put a pot of water on the stove, and once it was boiling, I took the pan into the back bathroom and proceeded to put to use all of my shaving experience. I prepped the head with a towel soaked in the boiling water. I used some of that same water to whip up a rich and hot lather with my shaving brush, shaving soap, and mug. I applied this hot lather to my head and spent the next 30 minutes shaving my head completely and totally bald. Yep, that right boys and girls. Telly Savalas, Yul Brynner, and Lynn Henry. (or Vin Diesel, Bruce Willis, and Lynn Henry for the younger crowd.)

It worked.

It was slightly pale under there but all in all it wasn’t bad. A couple of days in the sun and a little of that instant spray on tan in the meantime fixed it right up. Sheri loved it. She said I had a good shaped head for it, and I think she was right. I looked at it over and over, sometimes with two mirrors so I could see the back, and it wasn’t as bad as I had thought it would be. I even had the goatee to go with it.

I took a photo of my new look and sent it to some family members and a couple of close friends. The following are a few of the text responses I received back.

From daughter Rebecca: Omg! What, did u, do!?

Then 17 minutes later: Its not bad! Surprising but not bad

From my friend Lee: Yikes skinhead

From my friend Paul: What happened to you?

From my friend Dave, who keeps his hair really short: Wow! That’s less than
mine! I love it!

From my niece Mary: You’re so bald!

From my daughter Jessica: What up baldy? ^_^

From my friend Melinda: Nice do! What’s the occasion?

Over all, relatively good support.

Then my mother called. The first words out of her mouth when I answered the phone were “it WILL grow back, RIGHT?” I knew there would be those who would be shocked at what I had done, but Mom clearly was not going to be a fan. I kind of knew this going in, but she really didn’t like it all. I knew Dad would love it, but Mom was going to need time to adjust.

Once I had sent out the photo and received some replies, some of the sensations hit. Men who have had a beard for years and then shaved it off will understand. Walking, even walking in the confined space of the condo, became distracting. Just the act of walking created a gale force wind sensation on skin that hadn’t felt so much breeze since it was… well, in gale force winds. Just by walking across the room caused my head to move through still air which created this feeling of standing about 3 or 4 yards away from a F3 tornado. It was most disconcerting.

And that was just inside. Going outside for the first time was even more discombobulating. And all of this new breeze was cold, even in August. The sun beat down and warmed my head, and the breezes blew and froze my head… this was way too much new sensation for me.

I bought a hat.

Over time I became accustomed to the breezes and to the way those breezes cooled my head, because it was summertime and it really was comfortable being outside and feeling the wind in my… scalp. There was one thing however that I could never get used to, one thing that drove me into near convulsions every time it happened. Rain! Rain on my shaven head totally freaked me out. And it wasn’t just the first time either, it was every stinking time it rained and I was out in it.

It was also a few weeks before I could take a shower and go through my post-shower routine without getting to the part when I go back into the bathroom and grab my comb. When I did this then looked in the mirror, I would usually say out loud to my reflection, “What an idiot!” That was always funny to me when I did that.

The actual act of shaving got easier too. I got it down from my initial half hour to somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes. I also started browsing websites for guys who shave their heads, my favorite being www.slybaldguys.com and picked up some shaving and head care tips. It was a new life for me, to be sure, and I wanted to make sure I did it right and enjoyed myself along the way.

As time went on however, that guy looking back at me in the mirror wasn’t right. Somewhere deep down, I have this idea of who I am, and that guy isn’t bald, at least not by choice. That guy was a child of the ‘60s growing up in Austin, Texas. That guy is, and there’s really no way around this, a hippy at heart. OK, maybe not a full blown pot smoking flower child VW van driving peace-sign waving hippy, but at least a guy who prefers longer hair (and ok, I’ll take the VW van too if I can find one.)

So, I have retired the head-shaving razor. I still have the microwave in the bathroom for face shaving and I still use the mug-brush-shaving soap-boiling water method of shaving, but I just stick to my face from now on. This morning, I even shaved off part of the goatee, the solid white part that was on my chin, and am left with the old Lynbo standard Fu Man Chu mustache and bottom lip whiskers, the soul patch. Sheri likes the facial hair better this way, and especially likes the white on the bottom (at the jaw-line) of the FMC stache, she says it looks like I dipped it in milk, but I know she would prefer the sly bald guy she was married to for a few brief months. She would even take the full goatee along with it.

Sorry Babe, it’s just not me.