Without hair, I am nothing

Mon, 27 Aug 2001 19:04:00 +0000

I don't even remember her name. For some reason, she and her two friends had come along on my high school's Japan study tour, and spent the entire trip complaining. The only time they were happy was when they were eating at McDonald's, shopping at a Tokyo Bloomingdale's or getting drunk in their hotel room.

So, when I had to sit in front of her on the flight home, it shouldn't have surprised me that she worked hard to make it miserable for me, kicking my seat, throwing trash at me and fighting to keep me from reclining. And it probably shouldnt have hurt me when, in a fit of rage, she called me "baldy."

But it did.

I was 17 years old when my hair started thinning. An extraordinarily self-conscious teenager to begin with, my first stop when I got to school each morning was the bathroom mirror to make sure that I still looked OK -- 10 minutes after leaving the house. Nervously, I would run my fingers through my long, thick curls, adjusting and readjusting, never changing the way they looked but reassuring myself all the same.

Salon.com > Ray Smith

Without hair, I am nothing