When I was a senior in high school, 60 Minutes did an interview with Yul Brynner. They showed a clip of him shaving his head with a razor before going on stage for The King and I. I was both a little shocked and intrigued at the same time. I wondered how anyone could ever bring themselves to do that and at the same time part of me really wanted to try it. It wasn’t something that I ever thought I would actually do. About 17 years later, I gave it a try.
Not sure I can answer that question but remember as a boy watching the "Boy with Green Hair" with my uncle and the kid gets his head shaved. Remember it as I had never seen anyone get their head shaved before. Did not associate that with shaving my own head.
Was always fascinated... even at a young age. My dad had a friend who was completely shaved bald, back in the early 70s. He was a park ranger, and when he took off his hat, I was in shock and fascinated at the same time.
So I am going to say... age 8 or 10.
Except for a very brief period of rebellion in high school I always wanted very short hair.
- As a tiny little guy I always asked for "crew" cut from my barber "Ed" (a very cool young guy with a Hollywood flattop haircut and a 56 Corvette). Ed gave me a #2 buzzcut with a tiny bit left in the front and glued up with a Butch Stick and then cut straight across like the "crew" of a ship manning the rails. i wanted Ed to shave it clean like I saw him do for one of the other barbers and he was very willing to do it - but my Mom wouldn't let me. (So Ed just cut my crew cut even shorter than a #2 after that - it was our Secret" from my Mom!)
- then, starting in third grade I started getting a flattop like all of the reallyh cool guyhs had in the late '50s and i kept that right through the eight grade.
- during my freshman year of high school the Hippie craze took hold and I grew my hair down across the top third of my ear - but that is the worst my parents would allow. Truth be told I hated long hair but I was a slave to fashion!
- By the time I went college I was wearing a regular businessman's haircut - cut above the ears - which was radically short in those days. I didn't like my hair to touch my ears and I kept it cut like that until my last year of graduate school (1979) when I joined the Navy and then kept in Military Regulation or shorter - kind of an Ivy League.
-But by 1981 I had gone back to the Flattop and by 1985 it was a full-on High, Tight And Brutal Horseshoe Flattop with razor shaved back and sides every Friday night.
-I first shaved my head in my 40's as part of charity fund raiser that I had organized with my fellow police officers and did that once a year for five years, (much to the chagrin of my Barber who then each year had to recreate the Worlds Greatest HT&B HF from nothingness!) I enjoyed the shaved head but hated the growing out process.
-for the last five yhears I have been keeping the head shaved for about 6 months of each year. This has progressed and now it has become the "new normal"