At what age did you consider yourself to be bald?

[blondeguy]

I had a high hairline by the time I was 14.  Last year, I couldn't tell if I was going bald or not, so I followed the advice in my signature and decided not to worry about it.  I always wanted to shave my head anyway, so I finally had a nice excuse.  I wish I had done it sooner!

[Timmay]

I dont really consider myself bald....I just think of myself as a Stud with a Shiney dome! LOL

Timmayy!

[SLYinKC]

I dont really consider myself bald....I just think of myself as a Stud with a Shiney dome! LOL

Timmayy!

Dude.....Sorry to tell, but you are BALD!!!!

But is that so bad???     

[Razor X]

I just had one of those "oh my God" moments a couple of weeks ago.  I found an old picture of myself in a drawer, taken back in 2001.  I couldn't believe how thin and receded my hair was -- and at the time I thought that it still looked pretty good!

[Argyle]

I was just looking back through old posts over my lunch hour and thought this made interesting reading.  I wondered if any of the new guard had anything to add?

[pdxtodd]

I don't remember how old I was but I definitely remember the moment.   I was standing in an elevator with shiny walls and ceiling.  I happened to be standing at just the right angle to see a reflection of the top of my head.   It was a definite OMG moment.   I had a large bald spot on the top of my head that I had no idea was there.   At first I wondered who the heck that guy was with the bald spot and quickly realized that I was the only one in the elevator.   

[D.A.L.U.I.]

This is a "golden oldie" thread.  Since I posted, one refinement I might have included is that there is a first time when you realize that the hair you had back when isn't the hair you've got now-and many times that point is a solitary point, which is to say no one points out the fact, you look at your head in the mirror and remember or see a picture that irrefutably says--it's not all there anymore--you are alone with the realization.  That was how it came to me, and from that point I slipped into what pdxtodd recently termed "strategic combing."  The next trip wire in that process is when someone else notices and has the poor taste or sense to inform you of the fact--the knife in the scalp.  That's when concern can turn to paranoia about the subject.  All those conflicts and erroneous values that society places or has placed on "hair" add to the problem.  Fortunately, for the guys here, we found sly.  There are countless others who haven't yet. 
The ones I can't figure out are the ones who don't seem to give a rat's a$$ whether it's falling out or not--just can't relate to those guys. 

[Ming the Merciless]

Actually, (fooling myself?) I'm not really "bald-bald," in the sense of being a resident of "Horseshoe-Land" or "Shiny-at-the-Vertexville."  I've got temporal recession, not even halfway back, and an isthmus in the center.  But the hair is fine and white and looks rather indefinite and wispy until it's grown very far out.  And then it's fuss-fuss-fuss to keep it from looking as if I were a dandelion.  As I've said before, I'm lucky.  When I go SLY, there's no shadow, so the head shines uniformly in all directions.  Well, there's a birthmark of the "stork-bite" type, but I rarely am in a position to see the back of my dome.

[jamesh75]

I was 33 when it starting thinning to the point that some family members were giving me a hard time about my "bald" spot.