The Last Comb-Over

(Pg. 152 of That’s Outrageous)

But Ain’t no finer rig, I’m a-thinkin’, than that shiny little
surrey with the fringe on the top.

from “Oklahoma!” by Rodgers and Hammerstein

Mom often repeated an old adagage that went something like this: “Up to the age of forty, you have the face you’re born with. After that, you have the face you deserve.”

I guess it was a way of preparing her boys to accept the ultimate reality of manhood, while at the same time cleverly avoiding genetic responsibility for hair loss and other potentially fatal maladies.

It was, in fact, on my fortieth birthday that I swallowed my pride (on the advice of a friend) and celebrated the epochal transition with a stark initiation into the world of the visually circumscribed, a day I will forever remember as “The Last Comb-Over.”