The rise and fall of the hirsute hegemony

Just about everyone I know these days knows me only in my current guise.  Which is to say, the way I've looked for the past five or seven years.  My haircut has been nothing if not predictable.

There was a time, though... a time whose memory is receding nearly as quickly as the hair-line joke I feel I must insert here.  At that time I sported such a coif of dishwater brown hair as would make every tenth person halfway inclined to nearly do a double take.  (They never would, but the inkling to do so was planted, and that was enough.)

Come with me for a few days.  Relive with me the glory days of my heavily shaded pate, shrouded as it was in such an abundance of hair.  I am a blue-blooded Canadian male and...

... I, too, once had a mullet. 

(Of course, I blame my mother.)

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I seem to have come full-circle from this point, don't I?  This was early in 1975 and I was just past four months.  I have always had that same knowing look and those same meaty lobes.

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Kindergarten. 

If I had access to some pics from a few years earlier you would see how I was a platinum blond for the first long while.  As I started school I slowly faded through the blond spectrum: from dirty, to caramel, to streaked, to... brown.

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Grade 1.

As early as this we see my burgeoning penchant to wear shirts emblazoned with my name.

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Grade 2.

If I could capture and bottle that amount of innocence...

I remember one day of grade 2 when Mrs. Windsor called out numbers and whomever was that same age should raise their hands.  At the end I was the only one who hadn't done so and she looked at me questioningly.  She asked me if I wasn't seven years old?  I replied, no, I'm seven and three quarters.

That may explain some things to some people.

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Grade 3.

If I could get a whiff of whatever it was I smoked just before having this picture taken...  And what's with the buttoned-up collar?

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Grade 4.

Oh dear god.  If nothing else, my placing this elementary school mullet (aka: Camaro crash helmet) on the internet is proof positive that I have no intention EVER of running for public office.  Just looking at it now I feel like I should call for Starbuck, jump into my Viper and blast off to kill some Cylons.

It was this same year I remember being teased by a squad of classmates of being a virgin.  Never having heard the word, I of course hotly denied it.  I didn't know the truth then, but the hair karma I accrued this year would keep me so labelled for many a long year.

Parts 2 and 3 of this masochistic exercise in self-aggrandizement will continue later this week...

Comments

[Moksha Gren]

I've always found it amazing how impossible it is to look at a child and determine what s/he will look like when grown...but looking at an adult's childhood pictures seems so eerie becasue you can see the inevitable peering through. From the first picture onward...the Simian Farmer we know and love is peeking at us from over 20 years ago. Very cool.

[Alvis]

Now that you've tortured us with your past pictures, I feel I must do the same. But you were so darn cute.

[vinny]

Love it.

It's official. You rule.

[Mark]

Well, shoot, Simon. You have a great photographic record of your hair.

Whatever you discovered between grades 2 and grade 3, it must have tasted good.

[Moksha Gren]

I kept looking at that Grade 2 pic and trying to figure out who you reminded me of. And suddenly it hit me...I was expecting to hear the second grade Simon start talking about the angels of Iego or the secret pod racer he's bulding.

[Linda]

Love this, Si. Immensely.
I sooo would have traded my first grade boyfriend, Leslie Bender for the likes of you. He was beautiful too, but alas, was a thumb-sucker. Which don't get me wrong, nothing wrong with that. But not in first grade and not in front of your girlfriend.

[JuJuBee]

The outfit in your baby picture seems very Star Wars-esque! No wonder you developed the obsession!