Chinese symbols and designer jeans

Just a show of hands: Who thinks I should completely shave my head?

Before you decide, take a long look at the photograph accompanying this column. Yes, I know it's a bit fuzzy, a bit indistinguishable, a bit - let's just say it - blah. I hate having my picture taken, and so was trying to look non-committal when it was snapped, but it turned out like every other photograph of me; that is, like I just woke up and badly need to drain my sinuses.

So now, look at my hair, which is fine and wispy and could probably use some protein activators, and imagine it's not there. Imagine me with a shiny, egg-shaped head, and then add a diamond stud in the ear, a pair of narrow wrap-around sunglasses - neon, reflective purple, and add a tattoo to my neck that spells out "bad boy" in Chinese symbols. Then put a grimace to my face, as though I had just punched out Steven Segall with a haymaker blow and was walking around in a strappy T-shirt, looking for trouble.

Yeah, well, I didn't think so, either. But I wanted your opinion, because my beloved gave me an incredibly biased one when I painted her the same scenario. At least it seemed biased, the way she backed away from me slowly and called our family doctor and insisted he up my prescription.

She thinks I may be experiencing a mid-life crisis, but that's not true. Sure, I'm at the age where thoughts about shaving my head and getting dragons tatted on my biceps could be construed that way. Actually, I'm just looking for a change.

The other day I was sifting through my high school yearbook from senior year, and the masochistic side of me flipped over to my senior portrait. There I was, smiling as though I'd taken a hit of laughing gas, wearing that horrific flowered silk shirt and holding a leisure suit jacket jauntily over my shoulder, looking cocky and confident, as if the entire cheerleading squad had individually invited me over their to houses on nights their parents wouldn't be home. If you look closely, you can see where they retouched the portrait by hand to eliminate my case of screaming acne, and how the paint didn't exactly match my pasty skin tone, so that I look as though I was morphing into an albino.

And there was my hair, wispy and parted on the side, showing every indication that it planned in the future to fall out with a huge smirk.

And I realized that, other than gaining enough weight since then to account for myself and all three Jonas Brothers, I haven't changed much.

So I've been looking at various styles to adopt, like the shaved head-Chinese tattoo deal, which my wife says would visibly lower my IQ about thirty points. She adds that the IQ lowering would be no small feat, since rutabagas have been known to get higher SAT scores than I did. Then she laughs and says she's just teasing about my IQ, and I ask what's a rutabaga, and she says, well, maybe not.

I'm also thinking of wearing my hair long again, like our boys. Or maybe European style, gelled back and slick. Or maybe just a smiley face drawn on the ever-growing bald spot.

I'm not sure why I'm becoming so obsessed with changing, anyway. I was never stylish, not even when I was young enough and still had the energy. I've always been a casual type who blanched at the thought of actually dressing up and - God forbid - wearing a tie. I've never understood ties, anyway. They just hang there like a spare tongue, and always end up getting stained with whatever I'm eating when I wear one. (I can hear the mothers out there saying, "Well, that wouldn't happen if you didn't eat like a hog at the trough, now would it?")

Recently, I bought some of those snug designer jeans I keep seeing in a specialty store for teens. They looked great on the rack, and, despite my beloved's warnings, I managed to get them on with some major tugging and pulling. Of course, they wouldn't come off until the paramedics managed to cut the legs open with garden shears, and then the pressure from inside shot them across the house and through a kitchen window.

Don't worry. They said the feeling in my lower body will eventually come back.