Baby, Baby, Where Did My Hair Go?

What is it about our hair that gets us so passionately worked up?

My hair — and decreasingly, the lack of it — has been a bit of a focal point of my life. You see, as a youth I was blessed with a thick shock of dark, curly hair that was the envy of some of my early female classmates.

Or so I was told. Me, I didn’t really notice girls until maybe high school, but that’s another story.

But I was proud of my hair way back then, and my Mom — who dished out the boot camp cuts for my brothers every Summer — took pity on me and let me keep mine long by the standards of the early 1960s.

(I think my brothers despised me for that special treatment but hey, that’s the way the Mom Cookie crumbles…)

Anyway, when The Beatles came along, male hairstyles changed forever. The down-to-the-eyebrow bangs, the slightly-over-the-top-of-the-ear side length — it was a rebellious, edgy look that me and countless other young guys suddenly couldn’t live without.

And as time passed, men’s hair eventually grew to outlandish mid-back lengths. Mine was never THAT long, but it got pretty long. And — as an amateur musician — I was happy I had a full head of hair when it counted most.

But with marriage and a family and a career to think about, I kept my hair longish but well trimmed. And for years, THAT was my look.

But I noticed as I approached 40 some thinning was beginning on the top of my head. Oh, I could comb my hair back and it hardly showed for a few years. But the tide was turning against me…

By my late 40s it was easy to see my look was changing, and no amount of backcombing was going to cover it up.

Thankfully, over the years it’s been a slow and somewhat merciful thinning process, but I’m now at the point where I keep my hair short — pretty short, but not skinhead short — and embrace my latest new look.

And I’m surprisingly OK with it. No more combing it all the time for the best coverage. No more worrying about wearing a hat or getting it messed up while walking in the wind. My short hair has made all that a thing of the past — and I’m glad.

Life, as we all know, is a series of changes. Some lucky bastards get to keep their hair all their miserable lives, and I wish them well — of course. (Hopefully, though, they have some other cross to bear…)

But, uh, getting back to me…

It’s been a wild ride for me and my hair through the decades. We’ve had our ups and downs — literally. But it’s never completely deserted me, and for that I am grateful.

Still, it seems every time I look in the mirror, I see a little less sprouting on my head.

Oh, my once-abundant hair, where have you gone?

Oh, right — to my back.

Originally published at https://www.stevenvporter.com on September 1, 2021.