Bald Out by Dad

By Tony Kornheiser

Sunday, July 13, 1997; Page F01
The Washington Post 

Here's how my day started: I called my father in Florida to say
hi, and we had our usual conversation -- which is to say he
informed me that the high temperature in Washington, D.C., on
Tuesday was 89 degrees, the low was 68, the high on
Wednesday was 91, the low was 71, and a large frontal
system passed through accompanied by thunder showers,
dropping as much as two inches of rain on Baltimore, and the
outlook for Thursday called for a high of 92, with winds gusting
up to 20 miles an hour in the outlying suburbs.

This was a typical conversation between my father and me.
They go like this: How are you? How are the kids? Do you
know the barometric pressure in Washington is dropping?
There might be monsoon winds and hail the size of eggplants.
You better go out and buy milk and toilet paper.

"Thanks, Willard," I say. 

See, I accept this as one of my father's idiosyncrasies. 

He has lost much of his eyesight -- by that I mean that on the
street my dad frequently stops to chat with large shrubbery.
When he watches TV all he can see are shapes and colors
shifting around. This depresses him if he is trying to watch, say,
"Suddenly Susan." But the Weather Channel is all Doppler
radar, which is just shapes and colors shifting around; this
pleases him. He feels it levels the playing field. So the Weather
Channel is all he watches. 

Whenever my dad sees (by the bright, pulsating reds and
oranges chugging across the TV screen) that some killer
thunderstorm is bearing down on Washington, he calls me to
inquire, "Do you still have power?"

And if I didn't, what good could he do about it? He's 1,500
miles away. He can't drive. He can barely walk. It's not like
he's gonna rush over and nail up storm shutters. 

Apparently my dad isn't the only person who calls during
storms. My friend Nancy and her mother do the same thing.
Do you have power? Do you have flashlights? Do you have
whiskey? (Nancy is Irish.) Nancy knows of one older parent
who doesn't call her children during storms because she
believes that if lightning strikes during the phone conversation, it
will come straight down the telephone pole, into the receiver,
and explode everyone's heads!

Speaking of heads, it was after his weather update that my
father said to me, and I am quoting him verbatim: "Have you
ever thought about getting a hair transplant?"

This is a sensitive issue for me. My dad is almost 87 years old,
and he has a head of hair like Einstein. He has the same hairline
now that he had when he was 30. When we walk down the
street together, if you just looked at the tops of our heads you
might think he was the son, and I was the old man -- if it were
not for the fact that he has shrunk to the size of a hedgehog,
and he walks stooped over, and he's always bumping into
walls, and I keep calling him "Dad" in a voice loud enough to
wake a hibernating bear because let's face it, his hearing isn't
what it used to be, either.

I was stunned that my father brought up my baldness. I didn't
think he cared that I was bald. Actually, I didn't even think he
could see that I was bald.

Note to geriatric readers: Please do not be concerned that this
column is insensitive to my dad. It is all in good fun. I had him
read this column and approve it before it went to press. Of
course, for all he knew, he was reading "The Brothers
Karamazov."

But I digress. My dad was on the phone, asking me about my
hair in that subtle, diplomatic way dads can broach a sensitive
subject. 

"So, Tony," he said, "you think maybe you wouldn't look like
such a schlemiel if you just had a little something on top? Your
head looks like somebody's thumb. Don't you have a friend in
the transplant business?"

It was so quaint the way he said "the transplant business," like
the guy was a furrier.

"I know someone who does hair weaves," I said. "They take
someone else's hair and weave it into your hair."

"Nah, not someone else's hair -- you'll never be sure where it
came from. I'm talking about growing your own hair. How long
would that take?"

"About two or three years," I said.

"Even for just a few strands?" my dad asked.

"Dad, it's a human head, not a pot holder."

I felt bad.

"Just out of curiosity, Dad, why do you think I should get new
hair?"

"I think it might help your career," he said. He has seen me on
TV.

"My career? My career? Dad, this may come as a shock to
you, but I'm almost 50 years old. I'm not up for those Brad Pitt
parts anymore. I don't think a few strands of hair is standing
between me and international stardom. . . . What made you
think of this now?"

"The announcers on the weather channel all have hair."

Oh. 

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