Home › Opinion & Editorial › Columnists
The Farmer File: The scoop on droop
STORY TOOLS
More Columnists
- Brent Batten: Teamsters support group's anti-Abbott flier
- Martin Schram: ’Cone of Silence’ silliness
- Brent Batten: Fay doesn’t qualify as Olympic event
Share and Enjoy [?]
Now that we know the number of seniors in America will more than double by 2050, maybe more than that here, we must focus even more on what aging does to us. It’s frightening.
Everybody knows that as we age, the hair on our head thins, recedes or just falls out, while other bristly hair prospers in our ears and noses.
We know that many older people get a little shorter as they get a lot older. Shrinkage is belittling.
We become the “Sag, Lag and Hag” generation: Things tend to sag, mental acuity tends to lag and Hallmark tends to refer to us as Geezer or Hag. But that’s all old news.
Adolescent Americans spend their allowances trying to look more mature, older. Older Americans spend billions trying not to look so darned old.
We transplant and implant, we plump up wrinkles and de-plumpify the pufferies wrought of age and high living. The ones we can’t shed we call love handles, knowing it sounds better than blubber grips.
Now comes a nightmare that can make grown-ups weep and hair stylists go back to graduate school to find a way to minimize.
I call it DSS, or Droopy Scalp Syndrome. My hair cutter told me about it. She discovered it while searching the Internet for a solution to a problem I had noticed and asked her to remedy.
Recently, no matter how she cuts, trims, styles or teases my hair, it has begun to resemble the shape of a pup tent. Or a slowly melting igloo. The overall shape is reminiscent of a wilting triangle.
She waded through 43,800 Google entries for “droopy scalp.” There it was, the sad, sorry fact that as we age, our scalp tends to settle, coming to rest in a small fold or at least a slightly pinchable roll above the ears.
The mystery was solved, the facts dire. I had heard that sometimes one’s eyebrows droop (an early sign of aging) along with eyelids, eye-bags and even the eyes themselves. Some people even have droopy cheeks, lips, ears and God knows what else. Good grief.
It’s all a sinister part of droopy scalp syndrome.
As my hair cutter and I discussed this, she tried not to laugh, but I laughed out loud, secretly hoping laughter might exercise whatever muscles there are left up there to deter the droop or at least delay it.
Others in nearby chairs, all women, couldn’t hide their glances as they checked their mirrors, squinting to see whether DSS had attacked their heads as well. A few apparently noticed telltale signs and began to chat about different hairstyles that might disguise DSS.
What ensued was a lively conversation of what other telltale signs on the head might reveal other conditions, syndromes, maladies and such.
“I heard that if you have a severe crease in your earlobe you’re prone to heart attack,” said one lady. Suddenly the salon’s mirrored walls were all ears, as people who had come in just for hair-care were riveted on self-exams that would make chronic narcissists proud. I took it pretty well. Now I must go on the Internet and try to start some buzz, to crease demand for the newest hairstyle for men — PTH — Pup Tent Head. Pass it on.
---
E-mail Don Farmer at don@donfarmer.com
Demons next door? Your neighbor’s Great Dane took a nap in your flower bed and mistook the front lawn for a loo — and this was on a good day. The music next door may as well be under your bed. You’re wondering why the fruit is disappearing off your trees near someone else’s kitchen window. You have — or have had — neighbors from hell? Tell us about them. We’d like to know what neighbors drove you to the limits, and what — if it was possible with neighbors like that — solved the problem. You don’t need to give us your neighbor’s names, but we do want to hear your experiences for a story on the demons next door, and how to deal with them. Email 
Comments
This site does not necessarily agree with comments posted below. Comments are the sole responsibility of the person posting them. Break our rules, and we will ban you. No exceptions, no second chances. Read our privacy policy & user agreement.
Could you be any more boring? Do you ever get tired of writing about yourself? Can't this newspaper find someone who has an original idea?
#1 Posted by 12gauge on July 18, 2008 at 7:32 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Original idea? Crawford's Dinosaur Flatulence Theory of Mass Extinction. How's that for original?
#2 Posted by Illiar on July 19, 2008 at 9:25 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Post your comment
(Requires free registration.)