Storytelling Week 3: The Balding Lad

Michael was in his early 20s when his life took a sudden turn for the worst.  He woke up one morning and noticed he started balding.  There was absolutely nothing wrong with him; premature balding ran in his family.  His father was bald, his grandfather was bald, all the men in his family were bald.  Michael hoped that this inherent trait would surpass him, but even he couldn't escape the icy cold hands of baldness.

Michael was in his first year of graduate school, he wasn't even old enough to rent a car, so being bald seemed like something in the distant future.  He was terrified of what his friends would think about.  Would they make fun of him?  Would they be too embarrassed and stop hanging out with him?  Even more terrifying than his friends, what would the girls think?!  Michael was panic-stricken and thought to himself, "I couldn't get a girlfriend when I had hair, how am I supposed to get one now?!"

He started looking into treatments for hair implants and shampoos.  He started wearing hats to the point that it was weirder to see him without one than with.  His friends didn't really seem to notice it, or if they did, they didn't say anything.

Michael started hair implant treatments and started using special shampoo, all to no avail.  Since he was still in the process of balding, the implants were useless and wasteful because they wouldn't take hold to the follicles.  Michael was running out of options.  He considered getting a hair toupee.  He remembered his grandfather having one and how ridiculous it looked.  Michael quickly talked himself out of that humiliating decision.  He would rather be bald than wear a toupee, and that's what he decided to do.

One day, he woke up and decided to confront his friends about his baldness.  They were eventually find out anyways.  He was going to convince them that hair is unnecessary.  Michael argued that hair is just added effort when getting ready everyday and it requires frequent vacuuming from all the shedding.  Most of his friends agreed or were pretty apathetic about hair.  Then there was Adam, Michael's "frenemy."  Actually, no one in the group really cared much for Adam because he was such a jerk, but they hung out with him regardless.  Michael felt he had presented a decent argument and that soon him and all his friends would shave their heads.  Adam walked by Michael and grabbed his beanie, exposing his balding head!  "No wonder he wants us all to shave our heads!  He doesn't want to be the only cue ball of the group," Adam snidely exclaimed.  Michael was mortified.  His secret was out.  However, to his surprise, none of his friends laughed.  Instead, they told him it wasn't a big deal and would still be his friend with or without hair.

                                                                         Source: Permission to Talk

Bibliography:

Title: The Æsop for Children
       With pictures by Milo Winter

Author: Æsop

Illustrator: Milo Winter

Release Date: December 2, 2006 [EBook #19994]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

Author's note:

I read the Aesop (Winter) section this week and the story of The Fox Without a Tail was really memorable.  I decided to make it about humans rather than animals; I felt it was a little more relatable this way.