A Glimpse of Another Character
John was going bald and it didn’t bother him for one
flippin’ second. In fact, he embraced the fact that he had been losing his hair
at an alarming rate since he was sixteen. When he was eighteen he shaved his
head clean. “Easy to take care of,” he chuckled, his bright, blue eyes
glistening and his smile wide. He was a handsome man, one who oozed confidence.
It just came natural.
If there was one thing John had learned as a child, it was
that his self-esteem did not hinge on the absence of a head full of hair. He
had learned that lesson in a most unusual way, however – from his now dead
father who had instructed John in ways he could never have fathomed.
John had watched his father years before face the same fate,
baldness, but his was not without resistance. His dad had grown the few strands
that existed to enormous lengths and swept them across his naked pate in hopes
no one would notice. In front of the cracked, bathroom mirror, the old man
combed and primped, pressing the hair into place and spraying it for good
measure. The result was a thin helmet of fine fluff, the lacquered mat
conspicuously sparkling in the sun. In time he gave up, resorting to caps and
hats to conceal what he could not accept. John’s father went to his grave
distressed by his appearance, and for that, John was a bit sad.
Yet John was satisfied too. He had avoided the trap that had
ensnared his father and he had done so by watching. The old man had not needed
to say a thing . . .
