Category Archives: Aging

male vanity

July 10, 2014 6:48 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Social media lives from the advertising revenue that they generate.  I can usually block most of it on my desktop or laptop but it comes straight through on my tablet and smartphone.  Ads for local businesses, for services, and for goods.  I try to ignore most of it.

Lately though they’ve been bombarding me with ads for hair restoration products and services.  Maybe it’s due to my age bracket or maybe their advertising algorithms are sophisticated enough to note my receding hairline on my profile picture.  Whatever the case may be, it finally made me curious enough to look into it.

I’ve known for a long time that it was genetically probable for my hairline to recede as it’s a prevalent condition for the men on both sides of my family. My nephews however seem to have escaped the curse so if I had a son he would have probably escaped this as well.

Oh well.

As I said I always figured it would be inevitable.  So I’ve pretty much expected it and learned to accept it.  My hair has never been all that important to me anyways.  I’ve always kept my hair trimmed short as it never looked good long.  Nowadays it looks even worse if I let it go for too long.  So I’ve learned to ask for the simple short back and sides and to trim up the top.  Other than that I really don’t care all that much about my hair.

When I was growing up hair restoration consisted mainly of elaborate toupees and wigs and very primitive hair transplant operations.  Minoxidil came along in the early 90s and gave limited but definite results.  All of these options were horrendously expensive and seemed impractical to me, so I ignored them.

Things in this field have changed in the last 20 years so I decided to do some independent research.

Firstly are wigs, weaves, and toupees.  Basically artificial covers for bald spots.  Some groups claim that they’re undetectable, some people snicker and say no hairpiece is ever totally undetectable.  I’ve seen ads and actual people and to me they look terrible.  They need regular maintenance and replacement and some say they actually promote balding, though they’re not too clear on how.

Next is surgery.  Transplants used to look horrendous, even in “successful” transplants back in the early days.  The technique has been refined and results do look better nowadays.  After some operations you will actually lose hair at first before it starts growing again.  The whole process can take between 6 months to a year.  And of course as it is a surgical procedure it is extremely expensive.

Then there are the drugs.  Minoxidil and Propecia.  Minoxidil seems to be the more widespread of the two.  The effects are limited.  I mean you won’t have flowing locks of hair sprouting overnight.  The effects usually take about 4 months to occur and you may actually lose some hair in the intervening time.  You will most likely get some results but they won’t be overwhelming.  The main problem however is that if you stop taking the drug then the effects wear off in a month or two.  So you’re stuck taking this for life.  I priced the drug and found that at best it would be $120 per year for life.

I look at my hairline in the mirror and see what I have left.  Not great but not the worst either.  All of this new information pretty much reinforces my previous belief that I am going to leave things as they are and let nature take its course.  Once my hairline recedes too far back I may even get rid of the rest and go totally bald.

I have more important things to worry about than this.

Posted in: aging, genetics, life in general

Lee memories

June 4, 2014 6:34 AM , Leave a Comment ,

My niece graduated college the other day and someone on Facebook noted that they graduated high school in 1989, the same year I did, and that it happened to be the 25th anniversary this year.  So I decided to blog some high school memories about old Robert E. Lee high school.

What can I say about Lee High?

It was nice….once. Built in the early 60s, to teach the then prosperous Galleria area kids.  It was a direct pipeline to the University of Texas.  A lot of rich people came out of that school back then.  Though the only really famous person that ever came out of there was Billy Gibbons from the band ZZ Top.

By the time I got there in 1985 it was starting to get run down.  The rich families that supported it had moved farther west so there was less money to spend on it and it was crowded.  I think around 2500 kids.  There was a shortage of teachers so they hired just about anyone that walked in off the streets.  One teacher quit in the middle of the school year and took off never telling anyone.

We didn’t realize how crappy an education it was till we got to college.  I think of the seven of us that tried to study engineering in college, not one of us made it past two years before changing majors or dropping out.  The high school diploma I got was nothing more than a cheaply printed piece of cardboard.

Besides the education it was a fairly apathetic experience, the football team lost more than they won.  At one point the marching band was down to 10 people.  Clubs of course and I got into those mainly for my college application but there wasn’t all that much enthusiasm.  Drugs hiding in the background, not much gang activity.  Like I said apathetic.

I think people just wanted to get through high school and get on with their lives.

People ditched classes a lot, but really I never got the sense that the staff cared all that much if the kids attended class or not.  There were parties of courses but it was all very cliquey and you had to be in “the group” to be invited.

My fondest memory of that time is that I finally got a job and a car and I had some limited freedom to be out on my own.

As far as my future education went, I was uninterested in school until I got placed into home room with Stan Pipkin.  Stan was one of those guys that could do anything or be anything that he wanted.  He was ridiculously intelligent (went onto be the valedictorian), He was a baseball player, he got along with everyone, and everyone wanted to be his friend.  I think he inspired me to take school seriously and think about college.  He did way more than any teacher or counselor in the school to get me into college.

Time passed and we graduated and went to college or got on with our lives.  The school district got tired of the school’s controversial name and changed it to just Lee high school and disbanded the football team that had no student support.  The school is still there of course.  It now sits in a fairly overcrowded part of the city, and there’s already talk of demolishing it.

I haven’t seen most of my high school companions in ages.  I went to the 5 year reunion.  If you saw the movie “gross pointe blank”, it was somewhat like that (same 80s music, same type of people) but with less murders.  I’ve thought about going to another reunion but I don’t sense much enthusiasm for it from the people who I do keep in contact with.

Some things are best left in the past.

Posted in: aging, school

flaws

March 30, 2014 6:54 AM , 1 Comment ,

“My flaws define me. My mistakes teach me. My experiences mold me and my decisions build me.”

– Unknown

I have to be honest, I haven’t always had the best of relationships with myself over the years.  I don’t know quite where it started.  Possibly in junior high when I began to lag behind others physically.  Possibly the day that I learned that my vision was shot and I would need glasses.  Maybe when I realized that I wasn’t quite as smart as I thought I was.

Whenever it was, one day I decided consciously or subconsciously to let these flaws take over every aspect of my life.  They determined what I would and would not do, what I could be or could not be.

If something didn’t turn out right then it was the fault of my flaws and in some ways I could take comfort in that.  That was my excuse for not trying harder.  I loaned my flaws too much power and allowed them to shape my existence.

About four or five years ago I decided to stop my general decline and to get my life back in order.  Back to what I wanted it to be.  One of the first things I had to do was to not blame my flaws but to reconcile myself with them.  I had to accept my flaws for what they were but neither blame or empower them, just be at peace with them.

My flaws or rather my differences define who I am.  They determine what I have to work with and give me a road map to see how I will accomplish things.  These are the tools that I have to work with so I better make the most of them and learn to love them.

My mistakes have taught me not to use my differences as excuses for not doing things.  I need to look back upon this hard-won wisdom and apply it to the present and future so I won’t have to repeat these lessons again.

My experiences have molded my life into its present shape.  I have to accept that.  I cannot go back and alter my experiences.  All I can hope for is that my experiences from here on out will re-mold that life into what I want.

My decisions will build my life.  I can decide to dwell on the past and not get things done, to hide within my flaws and use them as reasons to cower.  Or I can decide to see each day as a new opportunity and to figure out ways to use my differences to my advantage.  I can decide to build my life in the way that I want it to go.

My flaws are not flaws at all.

Posted in: aging, attitude, life in general, plans

generation which?

February 2, 2014 6:41 AM , 2 Comments ,

I was reading an article in Wired magazine the other day about Generation X and how we’ve matured and changed in the last quarter century to become more responsible and settled.

While I don’t necessarily disagree with this assessment, what really caught my eye was a list of famous generation Xer’s, particularly President Obama.

While technically it is true (he was born in 1961 and by the definition of the generation X time frame of 1961 to 1981 he fits), I find it hard to accept that he is part of my generation.  He seems to be more in tune with an older, more analog generation.

Being born in 1970 I am smack dab in the middle of Generation X and I suppose I do carry some of the ideas, faults, and peccadilloes of my generation.  I am more in tune with my fellow X’ers than with my parents and with those born to the later generations. I don’t necessarily agree with all the ideas of this generation but I am aware of them.

But what is it like for those born right at the edge of one generation and another?  How do they identify?  Ideas, concepts, and movements from both generations tug at them constantly.  I always think that it must be something akin to ‘middle child syndrome”, where you don’t really know what role you play in the family.

Sometimes the generational gap isn’t too broad a leap.  The Millennial generation seems to me to be quite similar to the Xer’s in ideas and problems and I don’t imagine that those born between these two generations are too confused.

I don’t think that the same can be said for those born between the baby boomers and generation X.  I imagine that the early sixties was a somewhat confusing time to be born and to start out in life.  Many of the old cultural identities didn’t apply anymore and the new ones had not yet been drafted.  One generation is more idealistic and the other one more self-centered.  What does this make these in betweeners?  Do they rebel against both generations and set their own course?  Are they somehow handicapped in life by not having a firm set of ideas?

Posted in: aging, culture, life in general, pop culture, thought

The passage of time

December 15, 2013 8:22 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Pad, pad, pad, pad

It’s 4:45 on a Sunday.  I’m running along a dark street without a trace of traffic and I pretty much have the world to myself.  It’s bitterly cold and every bit of exposed skin is pleading to go back inside but I keep going anyways.

Nothing for my mind to do but engage in contemplation.

I turned 43 recently.  A fairly meaningless number really.  It’s not a significant age in our culture.  Just a place holder between 40 and 45 really.  I stopped caring about my age years ago.  But I do sometimes marvel at where time has gone.

I went to my brother’s place for Thanksgiving.  All the family was gathered and my nephew, just graduated from college, was there with his girlfriend.  They announced that they were expecting their first child.  How is that possible?  He was just playing with pogs and insisting I watch pokemon with him just the other day.

Oh right….  that was 15 years ago….

I look at my old man carefully shuffling along with his cane.  He’s wearing a coat indoors because despite the heater he still feels cold.  I still see him as the guy that would be taking long work assignments in Chile or Guatemala or a half-dozen other places.  Working from a field camp in the jungle or in the desert or in the mountains.  The guy who could fix anything round the house or on the car, the one who made all the important decisions for the family.

But that was ages ago.

I’ve done a couple of miles and I’m freely sweating and breathing hard.  Time for a short walking break.  My knee and my hip ache a bit.  A temporary thing, it will pass.

I reflect that not so long ago I would have been arriving home at this hour from a Saturday night out on the Richmond strip.  Sleep till 11 or so and then do little to nothing for the rest of Sunday but play video games and watch TV.  Just waiting for Monday to roll around to start the cycle all over again.

But that too was ages ago.

Normally I would bemoan all the time lost in the past but I know that all of that time has been spent and can’t be retrieved.  Instead I think of the coming year and think of each month and what I want to achieve in that time.

The last couple of years have been about atoning for past sins and beginning to correct the damage that neglect has caused.  43 will be about pushing forward with my life and plotting a new course for my life.

43 will not be just another number.

Posted in: aging, birthdays, life in general