The Law of Conservation of Hair

Every now and then my thoughts drift back to my distant past. Maybe this is a symptom of an aging mind running out of synapses or something; but for whatever reason it happens with increasing frequency with the passage of time. These moments are usually fleeting but sometimes these recollections lead somewhere as happened very recently when I began thinking about childhood haircuts. My Mom used to take my brother and I to LaSalle’s Barber Shop on Elizabeth Avenue near the corner of New Point Road. Just to the left as you entered the shop was a barber chair in the shape of a small car for their youngest customers. Slightly older kids got to sit in a regular barber chair but with a seat that was supported by the arms of the chair so that the barber could cut your hair without having to bend over. Kids who fulfilled their obligation of sitting still while the barber completed his work were rewarded with a Tootsie Roll Pop®. If this doesn’t sound like a major motivator you must consider that today’s Tootsie Roll Pop® is little more than a scale model of the original. Candy back then was bigger, cheaper, and better tasting. So what else is new? 

I am not planning on discussing how things were better or worse back then. I am going to talk about hair. As a kid I had plenty of it especially when you consider that I lived in a world of crew cuts that didn’t yet know of the existence of the four guys who would eventually call themselves the Beatles and change hair styles for an entire generation. During most of my life the hair would grow like gangbusters and become a part of the heaps of swept up hair on the barbershop floor. It appears as just another never changing fact of life.

When I was in my twenties my then girlfriend asked me to grow a beard. Facial hair turned her on and I suspect it tickled in just the right way at exactly the right times. She eventually left my life but the beard remains. (Useful Hint: You can hide a lot of flaws under a layer of whiskers.) Over time the beard grew in heavier and more manly. That’s when I noticed that my hair was beginning to thin slightly in the spot where it usually does on most men. It’s a never ending process; and to tell you the truth I never bothered keeping track. But like all the relentless and gradual changes that follow the aging process the lack of hair eventually became much more noticeable. Among my more noteworthy observations was that my beard had become fuller and drifted into an equilibrium condition where it only changes color. The hair on my head continues to get more sparse and I definitely see the day where I will be bald on top. What is amazing is that as the hair disappears on my head, new strands of hair miraculously appears somewhere else. I have become acutely aware of the hair growing inside my nose, on my stomach, and on my back. Even my ears are beginning to sprout hairs. 

All of this leads me to consider the possibility of a new natural law. Am I observing the effects of the law of conservation of hair? Indeed it seems like the amount of hair on my body is a constant. Even though it freely moves from places I want it to be to places I don’t want it to be, the actual quantity seems to remain constant. By quantity I mean mass. The new unwanted hairs tend to be thicker and more massive so that each one is equivalent to three or more cranial hairs. Seriously though, the changes taking place on my head are common to the male of the species which means there must be a driving force behind it all. I suspect this process is entropically driven. Even though my hair previously grew neatly in well defined areas, it now grows like weeds in an abandoned lot. The body is hell bent on redistributing its hair supply more evenly at the expense of places like the head. It is not unlike the many attempts by governments to redistribute wealth that invariably winds up looking as if they had modeled their country’s economy after the body of an aging man.