Alas, for over 30 million American males, myself included, hair is as fleeting as love sometimes is, although, every dome had its day.

I do have my memories. In college, fresh-washed, my hair would explode around my head like a lion’s mane. Combed out, it floated a foot behind me in a stiff breeze.

People tease when a fellow begins losing hair, and with today’s rampaging narcissism, going bald can be cause for alarm. In 2005, unless a guy happens to look like an Aryan executive in a Ralph Lauren ad, he may be in trouble with the ladies. The days of the fat, bald, and homely look are long gone.

What us balding guys covet is a sprouting bulb of 100,000 protein fibers on our heads. We need inventory! Every day any average head loses a hundred hairs. Balding heads lose no more than other heads, but many of the departing hairs don’t grow back.

The balding process usually begins in the 20s, when the baldness genes instruct hair follicles to make excessive amounts of 5-alpha reducatase. The male hormone testosterone combines with this enzyme to produce dihydrotestosterone, the real culprit. Under its influence, some follicles shrink, producing thinner and thinner hairs. Other follicles cease producing altogether.

Worrying about becoming bald is not just vanity at work. As guys approach middle age, in addition to hair loss, many also experience a loss of muscle tone and sexual energy. That’s life, but it is somehow tougher, I think, in a place with a college town mentality like Tahoe.

To combat hair loss, men have tried everything imaginable over the centuries. They’ve shampooed their heads with tar, petroleum, and goose dung, and they have groomed their locks with electrified combs. They’ve stuck their heads into rubber caps to suck recalcitrant hair to the surface only to find that, as Will Rogers glumly conceded, “the only thing that can stop hair from falling is the floor."

Some guys go as far as to get costly surgery; others buy minoxidril, a medicine once used for hypertension. It has a salutary effect on the growth of skin cells, but the juice costs $1,000 a year if used daily, and it comes with no guarantee.

Eisenhower saved Europe, but who ever wanted his lid? Adlai Stevenson was the greatest thinker of his time, but he wasn’t elected president. John Glenn orbited the earth three times, but people still laughed at him when he cut his bald noggin’ after slipping in the bathtub. You think Nicole Kidman would have married Tom Cruise if he looked like Gorbachev?

Next time I hear some joke about baldness with a reference to Elmer Fudd, a bowling ball, or a baby’s bottom, I will just take solace in the words of William Shakespeare, another bald brother, who wrote in 1623: "What he hath scanted men in hair, he hath given them in wit."