A wonder working power in the precious...

...credible as they seem are not the results of mass stereo...

You may wish to adjust the dial.

You're currently tuned to the wrong station. I'm Bald. Egghead. Cue Ball. Egghead, Cue Ball, Chrome Dome, Shiner.

These are the words he heard in his head as he went about his day, going to and from the office,

out getting groceries, or at the park with his kids.

These words spoken with a hushed,

vicious glee, and accompanied by stifled, gibbering laughter, spoken by strangers and friends alike,

spoken even by his wife. He never actually heard them say it, but he knew they were. He was sure of it.

They weren't, of course, because in reality very few people noticed, and not a one of them cared.

He wasn't even bald.

Balding, to be sure, but a long way off from the hairless end of that

journey. Certainly his wife cared least of all. He was a good man, a good partner and father.

To her he was kinder, wiser, funnier, and more attractive now than he'd ever been. And though he had his flaws, like every

person does, she loved him more with every passing day and year. A receding hairline simply

didn't factor into it. Why then did this anxiety nod him? Perhaps because his hair had been

so coarse and thick in his younger days, so thin and

wind-blown it seemed to him now that it was this juxtaposition, or maybe because the change had come on

so suddenly, though not quite so suddenly as he imagined it, and it was the shock of when he finally

noticed the change in the mirror one morning.

And perhaps it was because, even though he always tried to think critically about the world around him,

and not hold rigid views on what it meant to be a man in that day and age,

...