"How many of you are staying slick even though you still have pretty good or good coverage if you decided to grow it out?"
What initially confused my wife and is now confusiing certain folks is....why would someone go totally bald while they still have good coverage.
This is going to sound crazy, but ....
I shaved for the first time in January 2002, after 3 or 4 years of thinking about it. I'd receded a good bit and was just starting to thin, but still had most of my hair. I knew that the day was coming when the hair would be gone, I was curious to know what I'd look like with a shaved head. A botched haircut gave me the excuse I needed to actually do it. I liked the result, but grew it back right away, because I felt so self-conscious about it. I just wasn't ready to be bald yet.
However, after that first shave, I was absolutely hooked on the smooth feeling and I shaved and grew it out again several times over the next two years. Finally, in November 2003 I decided that I really needed to get this "out of my system" and that meant being a full-time baldie, whether I liked it or not, for an extended period of time. I forced myself to shave daily for three months and then extended the period for another three months. I wish that I could say by that time, that I never looked back. But suddenly, I had the urge to grow my hair again.
Now, here's the crazy part - I had a
Seinfeld moment. The hair would not grow back. I was bald -- permanently! I don't know why it came as sort of a shock because I certainly knew it was going to happen someday. But you always think you've got more time. I could still grow some hair on top and still had to shave it every day, so I hadn't noticed how much I'd lost. But when I stopped shaving, it never developed into anything more than peach fuzz.
I have even less on top now, but am still not naturally slick bald on top. And the crazy thing is, sometimes I forget that I've got severe MPB. Sometimes if I get into lazy mode and go a day or two without shaving, I can almost convince myself that if I let it grow for a long enough time, I'll eventually get it all back. After about 5 or 6 days, which is about the longest I've ever held out, it becomes painfully obvious that it
isn't going to come back.
Every once in a while, I see someone on TV or in a movie and think their hair looks really good, and think, maybe I should grow mine out and get it cut like that. Then I remember the cold hard truth. I think because I've never gone around with an MPB fringe, I just don't think of myself that way.