A few weeks ago, I posted a message on the BuzzBoard regarding some anticipated surgery and asking advice as to whether or not I should shave my head. The surgery was a week ago and I am at home now wearing a cervical collar. (I t looks as though the surgery was a BIG mistake but there is no going back, this is irreversible and I am going to have to find a way to live around it. But, I won't bore you with off-subject trivia).

I am not supposed to remove the collar unless my head is supported and I am not supposed to get the incision wet but my hair is driving me NUTS and I have been "cheating" just long enough to take a Navy shower each day and to wash my hair.

But here is the funny part. I saw my Neurosurgeon just a week before the surgery. He is exactly my age (46) and has a hair "style" right out of the eighties. He looked at me and mentioned to his nurse that I had a great Flattop. I jokingly told him that I could take him to Banana Joe's and that Joe would "fix him right up." He just kind of laughed so, I thought that the whole think was just "small talk" to relieve the tension of the decision I was being forced to make. I thought little of it at the time.

The last thing I did the day before the surgery was to go to Banana Joe's. I explained to Joe that I would be in a cervical collar for the next six weeks, that I might not be able to shampoo my hair, and that unless I could find some friendly soul to drive me all the way to Joliet it might be a month before I would be allowed to drive to get another haircut. I asked Joe if he thought I should just shave it. You should have seen the look on Joe's face! It was downright sorrow!

He told me that he would do whatever I wanted but he said that he really didn't know how I might look as a baldy. He also said that if we shaved it would take two months to get the full inch I need for the widow's peak in front. Then he said"you just find somebody to get you here!". Then he gave me a high, tight and brutal.

At 6:30 the next morning I am lying in pre-op in a large medical university hospital in Chicago, (fully conscious as I don't like sedatives). My Neurosurgeon, who is the chairman of the department at the university, comes down to pre-op just to sell me on this again and to convince me not to back out. He walks in the room, stops in his tracks and says: "that is one fantastic haircut!

Then he says; "maybe I should order that haircut for all the residents". Again I think that he is joking. A couple of anaesthesia residents whip around the curtain and mine, ( a 20 something with a goatee and a paper hat) says; "That one is flat perfection!". He then proceeds FIVE times to try to implant a catheter in my left arm without success.

My Neurosurgeon got a little green just looking at the bloody mess which had been my left forearm and excused himself on the pretext that he might be making the resident a bit nervous, so there was no more talk about the haircut. Then I made the big mistake and gave the final approval for the surgery.

I am going to see the neurosurgeon again in another week. I hope to be able to hire one of the neighbor kids to drive me to Joliet to see Banana Joe before I see the doctor.

Can you guess what I'm going to give to the doctor when I see him? A gift certificate for free flattops from Banana Joe for the Doctor and all of his residents!