At the MANA conference’s closing session I began my career of wandering around bald with no head covering. As we stood in a huge conference-hotel ballroom in a large (250 people?) circle, I was kinda daring myself to take off my bandanna. After a while I said to my friend Wendy, “I could take off my bandanna. What do you think?–No-no-no! I shouldn’t ask you what you think. I don’t care what you think.” Then I said to myself, “Oh, how hard could it be?” so I took it off.

Then I got many hugs and kisses upon my head. That was gratifying. I showed off my head until we went out to dinner.

Looking for dinner, we walked through the Inner Harbor area (stores, restaurants, many tourists) and Wendy asked, “Do you care that people are looking at you because of your head?” I said, “Are they? I hadn’t noticed…so I guess I don’t care.” That was interesting. We had been having a good conversation so I just hadn’t paid a bit of attention to peoples’ reactions to me–a lack of self-consciousness that felt very unusual for me.

Since then I haven’t really held at the forefront of my mind how people will react to me and my bald head (covered or not). Now (in my ongoing evolution as a bald person) I don’t really care much whether my head is covered or not around people I know and like. If I’m cold, I have something on my head…if I’m hot or itchy, I take it off. Sensible, no?