Seize the Day Read Online Free PDF

carefully, almost surgically, swiped away every strand of hair on my head. I closed my eyes as he did and I thought of Kevin. Funny thing was, I thought of how hard he would laugh at me with a bald head. And it made me smile. If it were funny enough, Kevin would laugh so hard that he would bend over and point at you and stomp his feet. He’d move away from you but not too far that you couldn’t see tears streaming down his face.
    His laughs were a performance. Kevo caught me smiling as he was wiping down my head with a warm towel.
    â€œWhat’s so funny?” he asked. “You haven’t even seen yourself yet.”
    â€œNo, I was thinking about what Kevin would do if he saw me.”
    â€œOh, man, you know he’d be all over the floor laughing at you. He laughed so hard that I thought he would choke. That was your boy. But I miss that dude, too. Do you know he told me one day he’d like to get a bald head?”
    â€œWhat? I didn’t. That’s why I’m doing it now. He wrote me a letter. Said there were some things he didn’t get to do and one of them was to see what it was like to have a shiny bald head. So, I thought I’d try it out for him.”
    â€œThat’s all right, Calvin,” Kevo said. “That’s all right.”
    He raised the chair upright and when he finished wiping away the leftover foam, he cupped some witch hazel in his hands, rubbed them together and covered my now-bald dome with it. Then he handed me a mirror.
    I looked at Kevo before I looked into it. He smiled. “Too late now,” he said.
    I placed the mirror in front of my face and I was alarmed by what I saw. My heart dropped at first because the initial thought was that I looked like I was a cancer patient who had lost his hair from chemotherapy.
    I stared at myself and tried to find me in this hairless person. But my eyes would barely deviate from my head.
    â€œWhat you think?”
    â€œGotta get used to it. From the eyebrows down, I look like myself. But the whole picture, that’s something else.”
    â€œYou look younger,” Derrick, a barber working across the shop, said. “With that gray gone, you dropped about six or seven years.”
    That was it. I was prematurely gray, since my twenties. The gray gave people, especially women, this idea that I was older than forty-five, even though my face was wrinkle-free. I still played basketball and as much golf as I could and I ate right…for the most part, to keep my weight down. I did have a soft spot for bread and desserts. But I controlled it for two reasons: one, l had a kidney transplant and staying healthy through diet and exercise was a must; two, I liked to be presentable.
    I never considered myself a “ladies man,” but I loved women and went through my share. Maybe I was a “ladies man” and just felt bad about labeling myself as one. In the end, it didn’t matter that much.
    â€œYou have the kind of head the ladies will like,” Kevo said.
    â€œI have to like it. And, as Derrick says, I look younger. But I look strange, too. This is gonna be interesting.”
    I usually hung around the shop for a while to participate in the loud conversation about sports and women, mostly, or current events. But I was not in the mood for much laughter. That was a hurdle I really wanted to get beyond. I wanted to get back to laughing, and I just didn’t know how because I couldn’t find humor in much.

CHAPTER FOUR
HEADED IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

    S porting a new bald head, I made my way toward Northwest D.C., where my daughter was to meet me for an early dinner at Ben’s Next Door on U Street. I didn’t tell her about my new look. I figured a surprise would make her laugh, which would make me feel good because I felt guilty about all the tears I had caused her.
    I was glad she picked that spot, but going there made me sad. The Fourteenth and U Street corridor had been a