The Baldening

It's been nearly two years since I cut my hair. That was never the plan. I don't particularly like having long hair. It gets in my face, clogs the drain, and since it's curly, is always horribly knotted. For a while, my plan was to simply make it to a year of growth, but my hair was just long enough that I thought, "if I can hold out until it's ten inches long, I can donate it!" A brilliant idea! But having never had a substantial length of hair, I didn't really know what was needed of me.

At Christmas this past year, my little sister, Emily, straightened my hair (because there's nothing a little sister likes to do more than play with her brother's hair). She noted that my hair was in terrible condition. The ends were dead and split and someone needed to cut them so healthy hair can grow out. I scoffed at her to myself believing that I'd just let my hair grow beyond ten inches so the dead parts wouldn't matter. I was at nearly nine inches in length at Christmas anyway. There was still plenty of time for me to grow my hair long enough and still get it cut before my wedding in July (the end of July, no less!).

But here we were, four months later, and my hair had barely grown at all. Certainly not at the half inch a month I was led to expect. It dawned on my that perhaps having poorly maintained hair meant that when I brushed it, the dead parts actually broke off, leaving my hair situation in stasis, no matter how much I yelled at it. My hopes of donation dashed, I plotted a new strategy. One of shock and awe.

Two thoughts informed my decision. The first was that my hair was longer than it'd ever been and that it would be fun to go from one extreme to the other. The second dates back to residual guilt from my college baseball days (freshman year, I believe). The team decided it would be fun to either bleach their hair, or shave it to the scalp. Those were the choices*. Knowing that if I bleached my hair, I would disappear (I am very pail, already), I shaved my head but just on the lowest setting on the trimmers. I couldn't bring myself to go all the way (though I did leave my sideburns, to interesting effect, and the team seemed to appreciate that). So it was settled. I was going to shave my head without telling anyone.

My mom was in Portland for a visit with my dad flying in on Thursday, so I thought Thursday morning would be the ideal time to do it. Sadly, circumstances greater than my hair plans got in the way, but the scheme was solid. I told Andrea that I was going to shave my beard and shower after climbing and that was that. I came out of the bathroom and Andrea was shocked. Later, I we Skyped with my mom and she was in awe. Mission accomplished!

I've always felt that girls have a luxury of being able to drastically change their looks with relative ease (acknowledging that doing your hair in different styles can be very time consuming). If I want to shake things up, I have to wait for my hair or beard to grow out before I can do anything which is why I enjoy the suddenness of chopping it all off or showing up some place with muttonchops (I refuse to have any form of goatee, van dyke, or soul patch. Normally, mustache would be on this list, but I kind of wanted to leave a mustache with my shaved head to go for the Bronson look).

Anyway, enough people have asked why that I felt it a valid excuse to indulge myself in this tale.

So much hair to grab.

I was a little nervous my head dents would look weird.

*I've always found these efforts at team unity to be kind of pointless. You already where the same clothes (called a uniform, of all things...). You're already united in a common cause. Why do teams feel compelled to go even further?