Hair is where you find it. My favorite hair salon name, "A Cut Above" contains several hidden meanings. I stopped going to a barber when a ten minute shearing cost twenty dollars plus tip. Now my wife hacks away every two weeks, turning my shirts into an itchy torture chamber and leaving little red scissor spots on my ear lobes. I daren't say anything critical or I'll be back at the barbershop in a minute.

I wouldn't spend a dime on a hair restorer, but a windfall bottle of (ladies) Rogaine invigorated my scalp for a month to no avail. I really don't care if I have a high (!) forehead, but vanity must out. What I can't understand is why God thought it necessary for inch- long hairs to appear on my ear lobes and a mop of fast growing stragglers to hang out of my nose. The shaving razor takes care of the mutant lone hairs on the tip of my nose, but I sometimes to forget to service my eyebrows until they start to look like a jungle attractive to itinerant fleas.

I just wish all this follicle activity would transfer to my scalp. Once in a hair salon in Germany, the newest member of the cutting staff was terribly embarrassed when the old-timers glued a patch of hair cuttings under the armpits on her winter coat. Unfortunately, she didn't discover it until the snickers and stares on the crowded bus directed her eyes to her armpits. LOL.

One day, after following me down the stairs, my wife informed me that I was developing a thin spot on the crown of my head. As if I wasn't aware of it for a year. Now I look at the hats in the stores with less of a jaundiced eye. I wonder if I'd look ridiculous in that Irish tam-o-shanter or if eyes would shunt away in laughter at the sight of me in an oversized cap with flaps. I've bought several peaked caps in the last few years and they all ended up on a restaurant seat or decorating the lost and found box at the library.

A recent appearance on a barbershop show had our antiquated quartet in a West Indies straw hats in honor of the Jamaican song we sang. In the video we looked like four retired gangsters on the way to a Mardi Gras party. I liked the line in the Randy Travis song, "If it all fell out, I'd love you anyway." My philosophy, exactly.

Kenneth C. Hoffman

A retired portrait and wedding photographer, I enjoy writing photography and how to articles, creating computer art from photography, bicycling and quartet singing. I also collect antique sheet music suitable for playing or framing.