My All-Time Favorite Sports Card (1973 Topps Carl Yastrzemski)

While I'm certainly not suggesting that these two things are mutually exclusive by any means, I was a big fan of monster movies as a kid and was NOT a fan of sports. When I was still pretty small I enjoyed playing soccer and basketball. But as I got a little older sports just weren't really my "thing". In high school I never played any organized competitive team sports (outside of gym class of course). And I didn't even enjoy watching sports much, either in person or on TV. There were a few exceptions. Growing up in the Boston area in the 1970s and 80s I did find myself getting caught up in the excitement of the Boston Celtics going to the NBA finals in the Larry Bird era, the New England Patriots going to (gulp) Super Bowl XX and the Boston Red Sox (double gulp) going to the World Series in 1986. I did watch a good portion of those games on TV, but for the most part my Boston TV watching was reserved for cartoons, sitcoms and monster movies on the Saturday afternoon show Creature Double Feature on WLVI Channel 56.

So, we've covered the fact that I didn't play sports as a kid. And also, the fact that for the most part I didn't really follow any sports teams or watch sports on TV either. A good example of all of this is how in the early 1980s I would tune in to ABC to watch the show "That's Incredible!" at 8:00 on Monday nights. I can still recall the disappointment I would feel during the football season when "That's Incredible!" was followed by "Monday Night Football". Pretty much any other sort of network programming would have been preferable before going to bed on a Monday night. In addition to not playing sports and not watching sports on TV I also did not collect sports cards. I enjoyed collecting cards like many other kids, but the ones I got were of the non-sports variety. Probably my favorite ones to collect as a kid were the many different series of Star Wars cards that accompanied the releases of the original trilogy.

I also remember collecting stuff like Wacky Packages stickers and cards from various Movies and TV shows (Star Trek, Superman, The Incredible Hulk, The Dukes of Hazzard...). Funny thing is, I never once purchased a pack of baseball cards or other sports cards (and in fact I don't even have a memory of seeing them on the shelves of stores where I'd buy candy and non-sports cards). A number of my friends had a similar lack of interest in following sports in their childhood and still don't like them to this day. But a funny thing happened to me on the way to becoming a lifelong sports-hater. And that unexpected game changer was...the United States Army!

When I was in the Army stationed at Fort Knox, Kentucky (1988-89) I had a number of fellow soldiers mention to me how lucky I was to be from an area (Massachusetts) so laden with professional sports teams and rich in great sports history and tradition. I had never really thought of this before (it's the kind of thing you can just take for granted when that's all you know). At the same time I saw people around me rooting for teams like the Cincinnati Bengals. While the Bengals WERE in Super Bowl XXIII and had Ickey Woods (and his Shuffle!) during the time I was stationed in KY, they just didn't seem like a team that I'd think to be a fan of. Then it occurred to me that Kentucky didn't have ANY professional sports teams. There was a lot of great college sports there, but you had to go out of state to find a nearby pro team to root for. As if to drive home how lucky I was to have so many teams to call my home teams back in Massachusetts, I was at Fort Knox in the summer of 1988 when the Red Sox won 19 out of 20 games under manager Joe Morgan (a run that became known as "Morgan Magic"). I made a decision that I would become a fan of my "home" teams, especially the New England Patriots. Keep in mind that I made that decision many, many years before Tom Brady and all the Super Bowl wins. I got out of the Army and went back home in 1989--just in time to see the Patriots go 5-11. And in 1990 they followed that up with a record of 1-15.

But, regardless of records, I was now a fan. And in addition to watching the games I also started doing something I had never done before; I started buying and collecting football cards. Not long after I added basketball and baseball cards as well. I ended up becoming a pretty big-time collector in fact. Fortunately and unfortunately for me I just happened to join the hobby right at the time that there was an explosion in sports card manufacturers and sets. Cards and sets were grossly overproduced and pretty much every card produced in the first decade of my new pursuit ended up being worthless, or close to it. But I didn't know that at the time and it was still fun to buy packs of cards and see who you'd get in them. I was getting a chance to experience a great childhood tradition that I had missed out on when I was a kid myself. I eventually had to give up the hobby when I was more or less priced out of the market as more and more super-premium sets were introduced and more overpriced and (supposedly) limited insert cards became the focus of the collecting hobby.

So I was no longer a regular collector. But I did have a LOT of cards. There were lots and lots of common cards that took up a lot of space but weren't really worth anything. I also had bought a lot of older vintage cards of great players, especially from our home teams of the Red Sox, Celtics and Patriots (I never really got into hockey, so I didn't have many Boston Bruins cards). With the thousands of cards I had it seems like it might be tough to pick a favorite one. I had a few really "good" cards that were actually worth a little bit of money (at the time). And I had quite a few cards that weren't necessarily worth much, but which were special to me. But it's actually pretty easy for me to pick what is probably my favorite card of all-time. Now, if I was to suddenly find a Mickey Mantle or Ted Williams rookie card in near-mint condition in my possession I might change my mind, but it doesn't seem very likely that I'll be getting cards of that caliber any time soon. So, what IS my favorite sports card of all-time, and WHY is it my favorite?

The winner is the 1973 Topps Carl Yastrzemski baseball card (number 245). There are a number of reasons why it is my favorite, and they are rooted in both my adult sports-loving side and my childhood sports-hating side.

Carl Yastrzemski is a Hall of Famer and one of the greatest Red Sox players of all-time (not to mention the fact that he has one of the most epic last names in baseball history). Picking him for my favorite sports card subject doesn't seem all that surprising. But it's actually only partly because of who Yaz is and the fact that he played for the Red Sox. And even if I were going to pick Yaz as my favorite just based on his baseball pedigree, I could certainly pick a better, more interesting and more valuable card from his long career. 1973 was a little past the halfway point of his playing days. His rookie card came out in the 1960 Topps set and is worth many times more than my cherished 1973 card.

I was alive in 1973 (four years old), but certainly didn't follow the Red Sox (or any sports for that matter) at that point. I think I actually even saw Yaz in action in the first Red Sox game I ever attended in 1978. But I was just a kid who didn't really know the first thing about baseball at that point so it didn't have much impact on me. When I started collecting sports cards in 1989 I DID find myself very interested in the 1973 Topps baseball and football sets for some reason. They both had such a 1970s look to them and they reminded me of a time when I was just a little kid and when The Brady Bunch was on TV. Both sets were full of all kinds of big name old-school stars that I was becoming more familiar with via my new interest in sports and sports cards. For a while I had a notion that I'd put together a set of 1973 Topps baseball cards, but other than a bunch of common cards and some minor stars that weren't in very good condition I never really got close to finishing it.

So, if the card in question isn't my favorite because of the subject of the card (even though I do now love Yaz!) and it isn't because of the value or condition of the card or some special meaning from my youth, just WHY is it my favorite? For that we have to go to my non-sports side. My love of this card actually really has nothing to do with baseball and everything to do with cartoons--or one cartoon in particular, The Simpsons.

1989 was not only the year that I got out of the Army and the year I started collecting sports cards, it was also the year that The Simpsons premiered (the "pilot" episode, the Christmas special "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" first aired on December 17, 1989). The Simpsons quickly became one of my all-time favorites, and it still remains one nearly 30 years later! While I would no doubt have felt having a 1973 Carl Yastrzemski card in my collection was a good thing in general, The Simpsons would make it an absolute must have, and it ended up becoming my favorite sports card of all-time.

The second season episode "Three Men and a Comic Book" (first aired May 9, 1991) was an early favorite of mine for many reasons. And despite being 28 years old it's still a strong, and very funny, episode. Even though I also didn't really collect comic books much as a kid, the comic book convention that opened the episode tapped into my geeky past and reminded me of going to science fiction/comic conventions as a teen (See Creation Convention--25 Years Later and Creation Convention II: Geeks on Parade for more on that). I loved Bart's obsession with trying to acquire issue number one of his favorite comic book, Radioactive Man. And I especially loved the Comic Book Guy character (who was introduced in this episode) because he reminded me VERY much of the rotund, somewhat gruff owner of a comic book/sports card store that my friends and I would visit in a neighboring town back in the day.

While the story of this episode is really all about Bart's pursuit of the Radioactive Man comic book, there's a small moment in it that really cemented the Yaz card as my favorite. As Martin Prince and Bart try to haggle the price for the comic book down from $100.00 Milhouse enters and has a special request for Comic Book Guy. He asks "Excuse me. Do you have the Carl Yastrzemski baseball card from 1973, when he had big sideburns?" After Comic Book Guy retrieves the card he says to Milhouse "Here you go, Mutton-Chop Yaz."

As you can see, the "Simpsonized" version of the card isn't an exact duplicate (Yaz's hat and undershirt are red instead of Red Sox blue and his sideburns are a bit exaggerated to match the "Mutton-Chop Yaz" description), but it's not a bad facsimile, and it's pretty obvious that this IS indeed the 1973 Yastrzemski card (while there's no text on the card it is the same 1973 design, Yaz is striking the same pose and the batting practice cage around home plate can even be seen in the background). One other thing that shows the producers of the show knew what they were talking about is the fact that Comic Book Guy was selling the card for $30.00, which is not an unrealistic price for that card in nice condition in 1991. I still wonder just how they settled on using that particular card in the episode. Out of the thousands of options for sports cards (and that number would still be pretty large even if we are just talking about cards that feature players with big sideburns) why pick this one? And, to be honest, Yaz's sideburns aren't really even all that outlandish in size, considering that it was 1973 and all.


That short moment was the card's only appearance in the episode, but it is referenced one more time toward the end. Bart is clutching Milhouse who has fallen out of the tree house in the Simpson's back yard. As he pleads with Bart not to let go of him Milhouse laments that "I didn't even want the comic. I wanted Carl Yastrzemski with the big sideburns!"


At that point in time my sports card collection didn't include a 1973 Topps Carl Yastrzemski card. But once the episode ended, not unlike Bart scheming to acquire his treasured Radioactive Man comic, I began my quest to find one of the Yaz cards for myself. This was in the days long before the Internet and eBay, so looking for a specific card like this was a much longer process. I looked around at a nearby flea market that I frequented on Sundays and probably also visited that comic book/sports card store I referenced earlier (the one with the owner who was almost an exact duplicate of Comic Book Guy). I eventually found one and was very happy to add a star Red Sox player in the 1973 Topps set to my collection. The fact that the card had been featured on one of my favorite episodes of The Simpsons just made it an  even sweeter acquisition.


That could be the end of the story. We've pinpointed my favorite card, gone over the reasons why it is my favorite one, and the fact that I was able to add one to my collection made for good closure. But even though it was already my favorite one soon after the "Three Men and a Comic Book" episode aired, the 1973 Carl Yastrzemski card made one more appearance on The Simpsons. In the third season episode "Bart's Friend Falls in Love" (aired May 7, 1992) Bart's friend Milhouse, well, falls in love with the new girl in town. Bart is pretty annoyed by all the attention Milhouse is pouring on the girl and the fact that he brings her to his tree house to make out with her. He takes advantage of the situation by making some very uneven baseball card trades while Milhouse is otherwise occupied. First he offers to trade his Omar Vizquel card for Milhouse's... yep, Carl Yastrzemski card! Apparently at some point between the "Three Men and a Comic Book" episode and this one Milhouse was finally able to acquire his coveted Carl-Yastrzemski-with-the-big-sideburns card from 1973!

It's a very quick moment, but full of all kinds of Simpsons small detail greatness. First off, we get another reference to the 1973 Carl Yastrzemski card. It looks a little different in this episode (Yaz's hat and sideburns are now blue), but it's pretty obvious we're still talking about the same Yaz card (and they even added the text to this version of the card).

As if that wasn't enough, the card that Bart "offers" in trade is another real-life card. Omar Vizquel was a very reliable shortstop who had a very long and successful career, but he was never what one would describe as a "superstar". He certainly wasn't in the same league (no pun intended) as Yaz. While he ended up with some very impressive career numbers, in 1992 he was just in the early part of his career. This card is pretty recognizable as being from the 1990 Topps set. That means it was only a couple years old at the time, and definitely a common card, worth only a few cents at most. But Bart's card isn't even in good condition. It appears to be pretty mangled and is missing a huge chunk of Vizquel's head.

Just as I did with the 1973 Carl Yastrzemski card, I wondered how the Simpsons writers decided upon the Omar Vizquel card out of all the worthless common cards that Bart could have used in a lopsided trade like this. Unless it was simply a completely random thing or maybe someone on the Simpsons writing staff was a fan of the Seattle Mariners and/or Vizquel, my best thought is that his last name happens to include a "Z", just like Yaz's. Who knows?


And there's one last thing to mention about The Simpsons and the 1973 Carl Yastrzemski card. I haven't seen or read it, but apparently there is a story in the Simpsons comic books called "Bart's Pal Milhouse: The Quest for Yaz". This one again features the 1973 Yastrzemski card (once again with a little bit of a different look from the original and the two previously seen examples from the show). And the cover of the comic even features a picture of Milhouse on a baseball card very similar (right down to the big sideburns) to the same Yaz card we've been discussing. Here's the third "Simpsonized" version of my favorite card and the Milhouse version from the comic:

It's interesting to think that the Yaz card was introduced in a Simpsons episode about a comic book and now it is found IN a Simpsons comic book! I think I might need to track down a copy of this comic. It makes me wonder if this story is possibly the "missing" part of Milhouse's Carl Yastrzemski baseball card saga, taking place between the first episode where he passed up the opportunity to buy the card from Comic Book Guy and the second episode where it was apparently part of his collection. Just how and when did he acquire it?

Here's one more look at the original Yaz card and all the different versions of it as seen in the episodes discussed here and The Simpsons comic book:

On a final note, I'm writing this blog while the Boston Red Sox are playing in the 2018 World Series. Before Game One in Boston the ceremonial first pitch was thrown out by a true Red Sox legend. That legend was none other than...Carl Yastrzemski!

LET'S GO RED SOX!

Halloween Oreos, 2018 Edition!

Nabisco Halloween Oreos have become a bit of an annual tradition in our house--at least for the Little Monsters and myself anyway. They've actually been written about here before in the post The Overwhelming Onslaught of Oreos in October of 2015. In that one I chronicled the fact that Oreos have become one of the most varied snack foods of all time, with all kinds of new and limited-edition flavors being introduced on a regular basis. But that post also shared my experience of trying to find some Halloween Oreos that fall. We generally don't eat a lot of junk food in our household (mostly due to The Wife's odd insistence that we all try to lead as healthy a life as possible). Due to that fact, it's pretty rare to find snack foods like Oreo cookies in our cupboards. That's probably the biggest reason that Halloween Oreos have become the tradition that they have for us (or at least for me and the Little Monsters). The fact that we simply don't get a chance to eat stuff like that very often means that when we DO get a chance it's kind of like a special event. And it's probably worth mentioning that there is one other element to our little annual tradition beyond the Oreo cookies themselves. We'll get to that after a little more background.

I'm not sure exactly when I first decided to pick up a package of Halloween Oreos (or when I first realized that there was even such a thing as a special Halloween edition of Oreos for that matter). But the tradition goes back at least to 2013. I know that because I have some photos of the Little Monsters enjoying the special edition snacks.

The 2013 edition of the Little Monsters with the 2013 edition of Halloween Oreos

As far as I can remember we've gotten a package of them each year ever since (and probably earlier too, I just don't have photographic proof). The next that time I'm sure we had them was 2015. That was the year of the post mentioned above about the Overwhelming Onslaught of Oreos. That post covered both the amazing array of Oreo products available and the celebration that ensued once I was able to track down that year's special Oreos.

And suddenly three more years have passed by since that blog! I have not only been quite lax about writing blog posts over the past few years in general, I've also not done a very good job of chronicling our Halloween Oreo adventures during that time. But I'm very happy to report that back around the end of September I was able to snag a package of the 2018 Halloween Oreos when I saw them at the local grocery store. They were tucked safely away in the kitchen and nearly forgotten about until just recently when I finally broke them out and the Little Monsters joined me for our annual tradition. So, just what does that annual tradition include besides the eating of the special orange creme Halloween Oreos? Milk? Well yes, that's generally included, but it's not really what we're talking about. There's one other important element. You might have noticed something in the 2013 photo above that will give you a clue (actually it will probably give it away). It has to do with watching something on TV.

Each year when October rolls around I always like to try to watch as many Halloween-themed things with the Little Monsters as possible. Unfortunately, as they've gotten older tastes have changed, schedules have become more and more full and TV watching time has become severely restricted. Some of the things we used to watch all the time included: "Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein", "Young Frankenstein", "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown", the "Fright Night" episode from the fourth season of "The Brady Bunch", the Disney Sing Along Songs "Happy Haunting" video (a bit on the "babyish" side for the Monsters at this point to be honest, but still a household classic!), the "Trick or Treat" episode from the second season of "CHiPs" and as many "Tree House of Horror" episodes of "The Simpsons" as possible, just to name a few.

The Monsters watching A&C Meet Frankenstein way back in 2011

Time has become way too rare and fleeting to watch EVERYTHING anymore, but we do have to hit at least a few of those classics before Halloween. And one--which might seem quite random and oddball--is a definite must. There's a certain show that I ALWAYS try to squeeze in, and for some reason it has also managed to become attached to the annual unveiling of the Halloween Oreos. And that show is...the "Ship of Ghouls" episode from the second season of "The Love Boat"! Not only is it an episode of "The Love Boat" (which is one of the things the Monsters and I--thankfully--still enjoy watching together), it's also a Halloween episode. And the best part of all? It features the great Vincent Price as a guest star! While the Little Monsters may not have seen many of Vincent Price's classic horror movies, they are familiar with him from the Hawaii episodes of "The Brady Bunch" and the video for Michael Jackson's "Thriller".

Here are the Little Monsters partaking in our annual October tradition of eating Halloween Oreos, drinking milk and watching "The Love Boat" and Vincent Price. Mission accomplished!

And now let's finish up with a few more moments from the "Ship of Ghouls" episode and some more photos of the 2018 Halloween Oreos:

The 2018 edition appears to have the exact same designs as the 2013 ones (seen above)

2013 Halloween Oreos

2015 Halloween Oreos

2018 Halloween Oreos

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Grown-Up Nightmares!

Way back in the infancy of the Monster Dad blog I wrote about a couple of the recurring nightmares  of my youth (Recurring Nightmares). In fact that post was written exactly EIGHT YEARS AGO on October 8, 2010! It was one of the early posts on the blog, kind of keeping with the "getting to know me" vibe of those early days. Generally when I write about myself here it tends to be things that happened when I was a kid. But I think it's worth mentioning that even grown-ups have dreams--and nightmares for that matter. I'm certainly no exception. While the subject of one of the scariest nightmares I've ever had as an adult is quite different from what scared my unconscious mind when I was a kid, it was still very frightening to me just the same. Before I share that nightmare, let's take a quick recap of the recurring nightmares I had as a kid, just as a frame of reference. And maybe we'll take a quick look at a semi-regular recurring dream/nightmare that I've had as an adult as well.

Recurring Nightmares of Childhood

The two nightmares I shared in 2010 weren't necessarily the scariest dreams I've ever had, but they were the two that I kept having over and over for a period of time in my youth. The first one involved Godzilla. Not a particularly odd or original thing for a kid who grew up watching old monster movies on Creature Double Feature on Boston TV in the 1970s and early 80s to dream about. In this dream I found myself inside my house--in fact I was in the living room where I generally watched Godzilla movies and the like on Saturday afternoons on Creature Double Feature. I was alone in the house and I would hear the unmistakable sound of Godzilla walking (stomping) in my direction. He seemed to be downtown (probably about a quarter of a mile away) and getting closer. For whatever reason (I guess because it was MY dream and all) I knew without a doubt that he was coming straight for our house. I would try to find a place to hide, and every time that place would be a little corner of the living room where there were shelves above my head and clothes hanging (basically a closet without walls). So I was hiding in the corner, but wasn't actually hidden or concealed in any real way. Godzilla kept coming closer and closer until he was nearly at our house. I couldn't move at that point and just hoped for the best. It's worth mentioning here that the room I was hiding in was on the second floor of the house. Godzilla would come right up to the house, bend down to the second floor level and look into the window. Naturally he was looking in RIGHT AT ME, cowering helpless in the corner! I could see that huge monster eye staring in at me! At that point (mercifully) the nightmare would always end and I'd wake up in a panic. Many years later Steven Spielberg channeled my dream when he filmed the scene in Jurassic Park where the T-Rex looks into the window of the upturned vehicle that had the kids hiding in it.

And a number of years after that the Hotel Gracery Shinjuku in Tokyo, Japan took the channeling of my dream even further by building a full-scale Godzilla head into the hotel itself so that some guests were able to get a very similar view from their window that I got in the living room of my own nightmare!

The second most common recurring nightmare I had as a kid also featured a giant monster. In this case it was a dinosaur (kinda-sorta related to Godzilla in some ways I suppose, but also more in line with the stuff found in Jurassic Park--though this dream occurred many years before Jurassic Park). The dinosaur was probably a T-Rex or something similar, but it was the "scientifically-incorrect" version that is familiar to people who grew up in the 1970s and earlier from the movies and TV shows of the time. The Boston Museum of Science had one of these old-school dinosaurs as the centerpiece of it's prehistory exhibit until it was replaced by a more scientifically-correct version in more recent years. The old one was banished to the outside of the building, where it still resides to this day. The Little Monsters and I always take a photo of that lonely relic of the past whenever we visit the museum.

The more modern type of dinosaur seen in the Jurassic Park films 

The old Museum of Science T-Rex in the 1970s

The Little Monsters with the outdated MoS dinosaur

Anyway, in this nightmare I'd be outside of my house. We lived at the end of a dead end street and our house was mostly surrounded by woods. I would be playing in the front yard and would hear the dinosaur in the woods coming for me. As it would approach I would naturally try to run away. But in a cruel twist of nightmare reality...I couldn't run! I would go through the motions (seemingly in slow motion!), but not be able to get any distance between me and the dinosaur as it got closer and closer. The dream always ended with the dinosaur reaching down to grab me. And I'd wake up in a similar panic to what I felt when the Godzilla nightmare ended. But the last time I ever had the dream the creature actually DID grab me, lifted me in the air and brought me closer to its mouth. At that point in my life I had heard the theory that if you were to die in your dream you'd die in real life (where did that idea come from anyway?). I think I realized that fact IN the dream and it caused me to wake up in an even bigger panic than I had ever had before! After that I never had that dream again. Or at least not yet...

A Recurring Nightmare of Adulthoood

I can't say that I've had many recurring dreams as an adult. And the one that I have had (and still do on occasion to this day) is probably a variation on one that I'll bet is pretty common and familiar to many others. It's based in childhood and I probably started having this one late in my childhood (high school?). But instead of featuring monsters and dinosaurs, this one was based in that all too real horror, my school. There were actually a few different versions of this dream/nightmare, but I kind of lump them all together as a single type. In all of these dreams I would find myself back in one of my old schools or one that was pretty similar. In some of the dreams I wouldn't be able to find my locker. In others I'd find my locker, but wouldn't remember my combination! In others I wouldn't be able to find my homeroom in time. In yet others I wouldn't be able to remember my schedule and couldn't figure out where I was supposed to go. And in others I would simply get lost in the hallways. Like I said, I think these types of dreams are probably pretty common. It's kind of funny that no matter how long I've been out of school these dreams still happen, and they still give me that same uneasy feeling that they would give me back in my school days. Well, it's not funny so much as strange and scary.

The Scariest Dream I've Had as an Adult

And now we'll finish up with the scariest dream I've had (so far) as an adult. Other than the forgotten locker combination-type dreams I haven't really had many recurring dreams as a grown-up. But I do still have plenty of dreams and nightmares. This one was one of the few that I can say which has ever caused me to literally wake up in a cold sweat from. And, in this case the dream had a very adult kind of theme. Instead of monsters or dinosaurs or other typically scary things, this one featured something that I don't think would have really frightened me too much as a kid. But by my mid-20s (when I had this one) it was a VERY scary thing to think about.

This dream/nightmare was very short and straight-to-the-point, but still VERY effective. In it I simply woke up from a night of sleep and headed to the bathroom. Nothing too interesting there. But, when I got to the bathroom I turned and looked in the mirror. Looking back at me was my own reflection. Pretty normal, huh? It might have been normal, except for the fact that the reflection had a pretty advanced case of...MALE PATTERN BALDNESS!

Image from CBSNews.com

Yup, that was it. I took one look at that version of myself in the mirror and literally woke up in a cold sweat! I can't think of too many times when that actually happened to me, no matter how scary a nightmare might be. I guess reality can be even scarier than fantasy in some cases! I had a full head of hair as a kid and didn't really start noticing my hairline receding until a few years after this dream. But I'm sure that the first signs of thinning were present by then. There must have been some reason for this vision to have such a visceral effect on me. Even now that I'm nearly fifty I still haven't reached that distinctive "horseshoe" look of baldness that is all too common among many men. But I seem to be slowly but surely heading inevitably in that direction. And all through the process the memory of that one-time nightmare has always stuck with me...

Image from TheIdleMan.com

 The Horror, The Horror!