September 25, 2020. Sheltering at Home Week 28

We thought he was bald. We hadn’t seen serious hair on his head since, oh, the turn of the millennium.

We’ve always known, both of us, that Jon’s head of hair was on the skimpy side. When I first met him, Jon had lots of hair growing from the sides of his head. He had curly golden locks down to his shoulders, but nothing much on top. An insouciant chevron mustache covered his upper lip.

Long hair. Mustache. An apartment on San Francisco’s Telegraph Hill. And on display in his living room, an American flag with a peace symbol where the stars should be. Jon was a hip North Beach counter culture dude, and a cute one.

As the years went by, Jon’s hair got shorter and shorter, as each new hairdresser opted to crop Jon’s hair closer and closer to his head. Neither Jon nor I much noticed the transition.

Finally by his last birthday, there was not much hair left on Jon’s head. His hairdresser had shaved it down to a wispy stubble. A few fuzzy spots remained, but that was about it.

But by then, we had resigned ourselves to the idea that Jon was, for all intents and purposes, bald.

But, thanks to COVID-19 and Jon’s decision to avoid unnecessary trips into shops, including his hairdresser’s, we have learned that he is not headed for total baldness after all. Jon’s got hair. Lots of it. Nice, curly, blond — OK silvery — hair.

It poofs out around his ears these days and it trickles down his neck. It’s hair and it’s there.

The mustache is gone, of course. And though he still has the American flag with the peace symbol on it, those shoulder-length locks are a thing of the past. Jon is not a hip North Beach counter culture dude any more.

But he’s still cute.

Have you and yours been missing baseball, football, basketball? Read about why at “My Guys Are Talking Sports and All Is Right With the World.”  More thoughts on guys at “Shepherd Bliss and Men’s Secrets — No Women Allowed.”