Iıll never be known as King of the Obvious. It takes me a little while to comprehend whatıs completely evident to others. It once took me four months to realize my wife had reconfigured the furniture in our living room, and that was only because I went to lie on the couch and wound up on the piano.

Iım more King of the Oblivious. This was readily apparent when I recently sauntered by a security monitor on the wall as I left the airport. On the screen was the back of some guyıs head with a small saucer-shaped bald spot.

As I reached my car it dawned on me that the balding guy was wearing the same coat as me. Halfway home, the sleuth in me was able to astutely piece together that the guy on the security camera actually was ‹ moi!

Now I had noted a sudden increase in sunburn on my head this past summer but never questioned why, and nothing registered when my daughter began gently playing bongos on the back of my scalp as I watched TV. I was oblivious to those beginning to-go-bald-clues as I slowly joined the ranks of the hair today, gone tomorrow club.

But the security camera had bared it all to me. Coincidentally, the sudden evacuation of my hair was juxtaposed with my teenage middle son beginning to look like he was gearing up for a Peter Frampton look-a-like contest.

Rapunzel had nothing on him, as heıd suddenly gone from a crew-cut little child to the poster boy for Woodstock.

Parenting books discuss not making hair length an issue given that teenagers are just expressing their ³ideological spirit² while they give their best hair imitation of Bozo the Clown. But, at the point that I began tripping on my sonıs hair ‹ well, letıs just say it became a wee bit of an issue.

I advised my son that it was time for his hair to undergo a little sheers and tresses tryst with the barber. He obviously felt different given that thereıs an inherent inability of any male between fourteen and seventeen years of age to detect the presence of their bangs blanketing their eyes on a nonstop basis. Despite my not having actually seen his corneas in a solid four months, my son still believed he resembled Yul Brynner more than Cousin Itt.

Short of calling for a formal Family Hair Intervention, we agreed he would get a trim. When I arrived home from work that night, he greeted me with a rather vocal and indignant, ³See, I got a haircut!²

Since it appeared that his hair was actually longer than when he went to the barber, I responded, ³And exactly which hair would that be?²

I was slow in grasping the key parental lesson that one doesnıt joke with a teenager about the appearance of their hair. For my son was officially in a post-partum-haircut-depression mode. This is where theyıre completely convinced the earth will soon cease to move on its axis while they see their new hairdo as a less than attractive cross between the coiffures of Prince Valiant and Pee Wee Herman.

I knew that a child coming to school with a purple Mohawk, nose rings and leather pants barely gets a notice from his classmates, so a wee bit shorter hair style for my son wasnıt going to register too much on the high school Richter social scale.

I also knew that the best thing to do in the years to come was to just let him follow his own internal hair calling, for he was clearly marching to the beat of his own blow dryer.

On the other side of the comb, I had much more pressing concerns. Like how to most effectively apply sunscreen to the back of my head and does Rogaine really work.

Bob Schwartz
November 2005