A HAIR RAISING EVENT
Yesterday I discovered a photo of myself online taken a couple of months ago at the Dallas launch party for the 2011 Porsche Cayenne. No, I was not there shopping for a $70,000 sporty SUV. The likelihood of me buying that car is less then the chance I’ll get a transgender operation and legally change my name to Daneilla - Goddess Of The Papaya Monkeys. I was there stretching my puny knowledge of cars with the other guests because at the last minute I found out I needed to work a table at the event as an ambassador from my company. At the party I did my best at making ‘under the hood’ small talk with all the gear heads but at times I felt as out of place as Daneilla - Goddess Of The Papaya Monkeys at a Sarah Palin family values rally.
The picture is taken from the side as I chatted with a fellow guest about a rare watch made out of magnesium. I am not sure why a watch would need to be made out of magnesium or who would want a watch made out of magnesium but at least I know more about the magnesium watch made by Italian designer Momo then about Porsche engine aspirations and torque. In the small-talk world of the cocktail party universe, I have learned its best to stick with what you know.
I looked at the picture for a while. It’s always weird to see yourself from a different angle then the usual straight on mirror view. Once I managed to finally look past my messy poofed up slightly untucked shirt straining itself to cover up my middle-aged paunch, I noticed my shaved head. I don’t often see it from the side, especially when I am in what my wife calls ‘serious Work Dan’ mode (I wonder how different serious work Daneilla - Goddess Of The Papaya Monkeys’ expression would be?).
Although my Dad is in his eighties, he still has a full head of hair. Mine started thinning in college and by my mid-twenties I was working on the start of a nice bald spot. I first noticed it while bending forward in front of a three-way mirror to adjust the leg cuff on a suit I was being fitted for. I called several friends franticly to announce this discovery but apparently I was the last to know.
A couple of years later I went to South Beach in Miami for a few days like I had many times before. Knowing the Florida sun very well, I slathered myself in suntan lotion before hitting the beach but later that night I had an odd headache. Eventually I realized it was not an inside the head ache, it was an outside the head ache. My hair had thinned just enough during the winter that I now could get a sunburn on my noggin.
When the early prescription version of Rogaine, the magic hair growing juice, first came out in the late 1980s, a buddy of mine said he would try it if I did too. We visited our doctors and bought our expensive little bottles of miracle grow liquid at the pharmacy. To effectively work you had to squirt the glop on your head twice a day, massage it around and follow a list of other dos and don’ts. After a few weeks of this embarrassing silliness I actually started to grow the slightest little peach fuzz in the noticeable receding parts of my ever-expanding forehead. The problem was I felt incredibly silly and vain doing all that just to grow some dumb hair. At that point I decided I was done worrying about my lack of skull coving.
About five years ago my wife and I flew up to Vancouver for a weeklong Alaska cruise. In the hotel room the night before the trip I announced I was going to shave my head. You never know how scary your skull is going to look so I figured if it was bumpy like an ugli fruit, wrinkled up like a shar-pei or dented like a junkyard car, I could have a weeks worth of grow-back hair before re-entering the real world. My wife then proceeded to shave racing stripes on my head before we took the whole mess off. I have been a baldie ever since, although shaving your head for the first time in the icy Alaska cold turned out not to be my most well thought out move.
I think at this point everyone is used to my bare head but it still catches me off guard when I see it from the side like in that photograph. That’s a lot of naked skull but I would rather spend my morning prep time shaving my head then sculpting a few wispy strands in the middle of my monk’s wreath into a comb-over or twisty swirl. Of course if I become Daneilla - Goddess Of The Papaya Monkeys, I will surely have to grow it out again.
The picture is taken from the side as I chatted with a fellow guest about a rare watch made out of magnesium. I am not sure why a watch would need to be made out of magnesium or who would want a watch made out of magnesium but at least I know more about the magnesium watch made by Italian designer Momo then about Porsche engine aspirations and torque. In the small-talk world of the cocktail party universe, I have learned its best to stick with what you know.
I looked at the picture for a while. It’s always weird to see yourself from a different angle then the usual straight on mirror view. Once I managed to finally look past my messy poofed up slightly untucked shirt straining itself to cover up my middle-aged paunch, I noticed my shaved head. I don’t often see it from the side, especially when I am in what my wife calls ‘serious Work Dan’ mode (I wonder how different serious work Daneilla - Goddess Of The Papaya Monkeys’ expression would be?).
Although my Dad is in his eighties, he still has a full head of hair. Mine started thinning in college and by my mid-twenties I was working on the start of a nice bald spot. I first noticed it while bending forward in front of a three-way mirror to adjust the leg cuff on a suit I was being fitted for. I called several friends franticly to announce this discovery but apparently I was the last to know.
A couple of years later I went to South Beach in Miami for a few days like I had many times before. Knowing the Florida sun very well, I slathered myself in suntan lotion before hitting the beach but later that night I had an odd headache. Eventually I realized it was not an inside the head ache, it was an outside the head ache. My hair had thinned just enough during the winter that I now could get a sunburn on my noggin.
When the early prescription version of Rogaine, the magic hair growing juice, first came out in the late 1980s, a buddy of mine said he would try it if I did too. We visited our doctors and bought our expensive little bottles of miracle grow liquid at the pharmacy. To effectively work you had to squirt the glop on your head twice a day, massage it around and follow a list of other dos and don’ts. After a few weeks of this embarrassing silliness I actually started to grow the slightest little peach fuzz in the noticeable receding parts of my ever-expanding forehead. The problem was I felt incredibly silly and vain doing all that just to grow some dumb hair. At that point I decided I was done worrying about my lack of skull coving.
About five years ago my wife and I flew up to Vancouver for a weeklong Alaska cruise. In the hotel room the night before the trip I announced I was going to shave my head. You never know how scary your skull is going to look so I figured if it was bumpy like an ugli fruit, wrinkled up like a shar-pei or dented like a junkyard car, I could have a weeks worth of grow-back hair before re-entering the real world. My wife then proceeded to shave racing stripes on my head before we took the whole mess off. I have been a baldie ever since, although shaving your head for the first time in the icy Alaska cold turned out not to be my most well thought out move.
I think at this point everyone is used to my bare head but it still catches me off guard when I see it from the side like in that photograph. That’s a lot of naked skull but I would rather spend my morning prep time shaving my head then sculpting a few wispy strands in the middle of my monk’s wreath into a comb-over or twisty swirl. Of course if I become Daneilla - Goddess Of The Papaya Monkeys, I will surely have to grow it out again.