As I reach middle age I find that I have been graced with a mild case of male pattern baldness. My forehead is getting taller and the hair on the crown of my head is getting sparser. By no means am I bald and I don't expect to be any time soon. Even if I were, though, I would avoid the travesty known as the comb-over. And yet....
And yet, I am mildly distressed to find that my hair has decided to grow a comb-over without consulting me!
"How," you may ask, "would your hair do such a wild and crazy thing?" You wonder if maybe, just maybe, I secretly desire to string long bundled and dampened strands of hair across my gleaming pate, perhaps to spare birds and low-flying aircraft the blinding glare.
"No!" I would reply, "Pilots wear expensive sunglasses and damn the birds."
Anyway, back to my conundrum. I got a haircut recently. It is shorter than I wanted but what can I expect when I go to a barbershop near a Marine Corps air station? I noticed the next morning that when I tried to put my usual left-side part in what was left of my hair it wouldn't stick. I looked closer (in the mirror) and saw that all the hair below the part (closer to my left ear) was sticking up as if trying to climb over to my right ear. It's been three weeks and it does the same thing every morning!
I'm beginning to wonder if, sometime in our deep collective past, there was some positive survival value to a comb-over.