Bald(ing) but Brave

There comes a time in a man's life when he is made to realise that he is not immortal, may be not even long lived, but entirely human and perhaps even a little frail. Such a moment hastened its unwelcome way into my life this very day.

 

   I was minding my own business and looking at the images from our latest book launch. It was then that I saw it. It was there, thumbing its metaphorical nose at me. It was the sole cause of today's woe. That alien, that monstrosity of a barely covered morsel of human flesh, shone in the camera flashlight, giving the lie to my youth, and the certainty of my mid-life onset.

 

   It was a crisis. It was a moment of utter dread. That casually caught image, captured within a fraction of a second by a nosey lens, revealed to the whole world, and most of all to me, that I had nurtured, at the near unobservable rear of my noggin - a much dreaded and seemingly insidious - bald patch.

 

   It was a bald patch to end all bald patches. Gone was my personal myth of my peter pan looks, gone the Wilde like portrait in the loft. Gone was the idea that I might remain unscathed by the passage of time and live on – an immortal, slightly wrinkled but nevertheless handsome and still youthful looking.

 

   It was a revelation. It was thus revealed. Though I had no monk like intentions, I had evidently developed the makings of a tonsure. Should I wear my hat more? Should I wear it less? Was the hat the cause of the hair loss, or would the hat prevent it. I was at a loss. Would I go forth forever conscious of my depletion, obsessed by my poignant baldness or would life return to almost normal once I got used to yet another sign of creeping age. It was a sixty four million dollar question but I don’t have a sixty four million dollar, drat!