“It looks good…you have a nice round head.” A nice round head? What the heck is that suppose to mean? My mind immediately equates my appearance to that of Charlie Brown, the round headed bald kid from the comic strip. Sigh…tell me I look handsome, tell me that the style suits me, tell me that I could be a male model…OK, the last one is a stretch but please, please don’t compare me with some inept, always depressed, bald headed kid with low self esteem.

My own acceptance of the situation took significant effort. I’m not bemoaning the circumstance. Rather, the soul searching and self reflection proved to be a positive exercise, one which I probably never would have undertaken had it not been for alopecia. Give me, at minimum, the credit for my effort. Bad days are few and far between, I’d dare say less frequent than those experienced by the average person. Self pity is non-existent. Why break open a recently healed wound just to rub in salt? I don’t understand.

Perhaps I was raised different. Mom was emphatic…if you can say something nice, don’t say anything at all. My Dad had a different approach…physical labor to give you time to think about what was said or done, accompanied by a sincere apology to the person you offended. I went there once, calling an elderly lady on the street an old hag after she took my baseball which had gone into her rose bushes for the umpteenth time. My parents found out and made me rake her lawn, weed the gardens, and apologize. Turns out, she was much nicer than I thought. She thanked me for the apology and the hard work, then gave me lemonade and fresh baked cookies…and my ball. As I sat there inhaling the treats, feeling plenty guilty by this time mind you, while she explained how much effort went into caring for her gardens. My bad…until then, I had never looked at it from her perspective and could now relate as my hands and knees were sore from pulling weeds. I had no right to trample on that which she had work so hard to accomplish. Lessons learned…me and the boys took our baseball games out of the street and into the park after that.