Tough Choices

I have a friend who is starting to lose his hair. Recently, while lamenting this development, he wondered aloud if women really did look unfavorably upon men who have gone bald. After listening to his concerns for several minutes, I suggested to him that he have his testicles removed. He told me that I was being insensitive to his plight, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. I explained to him, eunuchs are famously resistant to baldness. This is a fact. I told him if he really wanted to maintain a full head of hair, castration would do the trick (warning: while castration will stop hair loss, it does not help those already bald grow hair back). Of course, this would result in his having hair but no testicles, so I’m not really sure if this is a fair trade. Then again, seeing as how I’m not the one losing my hair, I suppose I’m not really the most qualified person to judge (for those who are interested, I’m pretty certain my friend is opting to keep his balls).

Anyway, this led to an expanded discussion of what kinds of things a person would be willing to give up in order to prevent the loss of something else (in this instance hair). For example, my friend would be willing to subtract 5 years off the end of his life if it would ensure that his remaining years could be spent with a full head of hair (I posed 5 as an arbitrary number rather than try and go through every number of years from 1 on, in order to determine the figurative line in the sand). He also would be willing to lose his front teeth (using the logic that false teeth are more convincing then wigs or transplants). He was not however willing to give up an arm, leg, hand, foot, finger, or toe (however, the decision to keep the toe was done so only after long and careful deliberation).

After a while this discussion segued into a more abstract conversation about which would you rather. That is to say, which would you rather be a paraplegic or be blind? A quadriplegic or be blind? Be deaf or be blind? Be deaf or quadriplegic? Be paraplegic or be deaf? We both agreed that we would rather be deaf over being either paraplegic or quadriplegic or blind. And we also agreed we would both rather be paraplegic than blind, however I chose being a quadriplegic over being blind and my friend went the opposite way (again this last one took some time to decide).

That was pretty much the end of the conversation, and coincidentally this is just about the end of this post. Feel free to weigh in on any of the choices offered above, I’d be curious to know where others stand (Disclaimer: this post and the aforementioned conversation were in no way meant to offend anyone who is blind, deaf, paraplegic, quadriplegic, bald, balding, a eunuch, missing teeth, or any limbs, or anyone else offended by blog posts or conversations about people who are paraplegic, quadriplegic, deaf, blind, bald, balding, eunuchs, or missing teeth, or any limbs). Have a nice weekend.