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I looked back at my senior pictures.  When I was young, I was completely convinced that I could take on the world and win.  Couldn’t get a date, but I could take on the world.  It was 1975, and I looked so cowboyish.  In the little town that I lived in, we would schedule two or three seniors at a time to go to the portrait photographer in the town near ours to have our picture taken.  The town we lived in was a small country town and the photographer lived about 15 miles away.  We even needed to do some of our shopping 15 miles away in a different town.  It seems as though everything was 15 miles away from Burrton Kansas.

I had a horse, and I was an attempting to be a cowboy.  I could train a horse, I could take care of a horse and I could ride a horse.  I wore cowboy boots, I wore shirts that snapped and had yokes, and I owned a cowboy hat.  I bought my saddle, it was purchased at a horse auction for $15.  It was an old cavalry saddle from the late 1800’s as best as I could tell.  It was made for long rides, but it still made my butt hurt if I didn’t ride very much.  I think that Mom and Dad finally sold that saddle at a garage sale to some other wanna be cowboy.

When I brought my Senior portrait proofs home my dad asked “Which one of you is graduating?”.  He didn’t think that my horse should be in my portrait.  He was probably right, she would not have gotten the grades it took to pass any of the classes that took.

It’s funny what you remember when you look at old photographs.  I don’t remember that my hair was as long as it was.  The wind was strong that day, as it always is in Kansas during the summer.  It had blown my hair back and I didn’t want to wear the hat.  And I surely don’t remember how far back my forehead went.  Even then, when I was but 17, my hairline was not receding, it was making a full on retreat.

By the time I got out of the Army in 1981, it was fairly obvious that my hair was no longer mine, it belong to the wind, and my brushes.  I could pretty much comb my hair with a 2 toothed comb.  My brother was moving one day in ‘81 and I was helping him and his 2 new roommates.  One of them, I don’t remember his name, (let’s just call him “ScumDogComedian” and be done with it) looked at me and he said, “You know Tim, I am really jealous of you.”

I asked him why, to which he replied, “I will never be able to grow a forehead like yours.”

For a person who has never been at a lack for words, I was just that.  So I did the only thing that a man could do; I reached for his throat.  Fortunately, for the both of us, “ScumDogComedian” was a quick little leprechaun, and he got away.  It did teach me one thing that I will always remember.  I can either try to cover up the dome, or be proud of it.

I believe that I will let the sun shine off the top of my head.  With a chrome dome, all things are possible.