Bald Spot
So I have a small bald spot on the right side of my head. I was born this way. Evolution at work, I guess.
It’s weird, but largely harmless. Occasionally in life I’ve had people cutting my hair suddenly panic, thinking they fucked up. I’d laugh and assure them they did not. I also toyed with the idea of getting “666” tattooed there someday. I haven’t, but I enjoy thinking about how that would really freak out barbers.
I tend to keep my locks long in general, so this has always been a non-issue. I’d forget about it for years at a time but then buzz it all off on a whim and later look in a mirror and go, “oh yeah that.”
On one such occasion when the hairless patch was obvious I attended a barbecue with many friends and acquaintances. This included Beth who noticed this feature on me for the first time and practically sprinted across the backyard to ask, “have you always been bald there?” I said yes. She lifted up her longer locks to reveal the same exact smooth spot on her head.
“Okay we gotta figure this out,” I said. We quickly discussed our respective heritages. I’m pretty much 100% Ashkenazi Jew, and she is 0%, so that seemed to pretty much end the discussion. However she then noted she had Lithuanian blood in her family, which was a bit curious as I definitely had family booted around Russia/Lithuania before emigrating to England and then the US. Not sure if there was some northern European mingling way back in the family tree, but my green eyes (a rarity in my family) came from somewhere, right? Perhaps the green eye gene comes bundled with a propensity for funky hairlessness?
Anyway, the term for (what I think is) this condition is Congenital Triangular Alopecia. And looking at the pictures on line it seems like Beth and I got off lucky with rather mild, benign cases.
