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Living according to poll results seemed easy: public school is free; Laszlo was excited about music classes; my editor said she thought TIME readers need my page as a break from political coverage; and penis. But I was a little nervous when I saw the responses to this question: "I am losing hair from the front of my head. Should I ..." First of all, 30% said to shave my head--not realizing that when I did that once for a story, my lovely wife Cassandra said it made me look like "an accountant named Murray." Far worse, 48% said to "keep my same hairstyle and ignore it." Losing your hair is not something you can ignore like calls from the credit-card company, or your children.
But if America wants to see the top third of my head, America is going to see it. I can't go back to making decisions based on the vagaries of my blood sugar, level of sleep deprivation, what my friends are doing and penis. Sure, if my goal were to please myself or follow a code of honor, then making my own decisions would make sense. But the point of everything I do is to make other people like me. Except for old people. They don't read this magazine, right?