I have always been obsessed by and therefore questioned the way I would behave if I ever lost all my hair and had to walk around bald. Would it change my outgoing personality and make me a "shy guy" or would I swagger and say, "The heck with it?"

I have known some very virile men who were bald. Yul Brynner, Joe Garagiola, Michael Jordan, Andre Agassi and my childhood pal Melvin, come to mind.

Melvin started balding around 14 years of age. His beautiful, wispy pompadour was becoming thinner and his scalp was more and more visible. He decided to answer an advertisement on the back page of the Daily Mirror. They guaranteed the restoration of your hair and printed pictures to prove it. Mel returned to Pop's Pool Room weekly in midwinter with his dome beet-red from all the manipulations that were performed on his scalp. Nothing worked! However, just to retrieve some satisfaction from paying all that money, he swiped about two dozen combs from his tormentors. Quite paradoxical.

The old saying, "Get married before you lose all your hair" is no longer valid. Today, guys are shaving their heads at the drop of a hat. Half the National Basketball Association has shaved their crania and wear multi-colored elastic headbands. It appears to be a badge of manliness and strength.

I have always been a doubter of the pseudo-science called phrenology. This doctrine states that intelligence and character analysis can be determined by shape and protuberances of the human skull.

Seeing the various bumps and sutures (lines between head bones) scares me no end. I would always wonder while the barber shaved my head, "Will it grow back when I want it to?"

Male vanity is a very serious motivation and it changes from generation to generation like the slick pages in Esquire magazine. Baldness is not an illness and it should not hamper the psyche of young men or even elderly ones.

The Webster's Dictionary says it best, "Hair is the modified epidermal tissue growing from the skin or outer covering of a mammal." Nothing more - nothing less.