Seattle. 1994. I was standing in the bathroom of a friends' apartment, post-shower, pre-getting coffee, most likely, and I towel-dried my hair.

And there it was.

"What the hell?" I asked the fogged image in the mirror.

On the front, right side of my head, a small, very small, thinning area stared me in the eye.

I was losing my hair at 24 years old.

For those of you fortunate enough to have kept a full noggin of the curly, the straight, the wavy, the frizzy, the fine, you will never understand what that moment is like. From that point on, you come to grips with the hairstyle you will have for the rest of your life: Bald on top, short on the sides. Unless you're into the Ben Franklin look.

Not a day went by from that 5 minutes in that Seattle bathroom that I didn't think about losing my hair, and it should be known, not one man on the planet shrugs it off and says, "Meh, whatever." To women, I liken it to having to imagine yourself walking around in a g-string, every day, for the rest of your life.

So one Saturday, 4 years ago, I had a chat with my hair. I told it that I noticed it wasn't happy doing business with my scalp any longer; that it was slacking, lazing about in the bowels of my bathtub and sink, no longer performing it's duties to make me look young and vibrant.

"I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to let you go."

I stopped at my local Target, bought a pair of clippers, went home, sat out on the back deck in the warm October sun, and buzzed away.

I've been told I have a nicely shaped head, and so for that, I'm thankful, because not one day since the momentous "Day of the Shaving" have I thought about my hair. In fact, my bald brethren and I share a common bond now, and I revel in it. Whenever I face another chrome-dome, there's a "Hey-lookit-what-we-did" look we share with each other, knowing that we took charge of Mother Nature and kicked her ass.

So this is my head. Rub your monitor for good luck.