I just saw another picture of Ron Howard...

...wearing a hat indoors. Ron, I've got some news for you: not only are you bald, but everyone else knows it. So unless you're outside, take off the hat.

NFL fans of a certain age might remember Bum Phillips, father of Dallas Cowboys' coach Wade Phillips and one-time coach of the Houston Oilers. He was a good ol' boy that always wore a cowboy hat on the sidelines except when coaching at home in the Astrodome. When asked about this he explained that his mother once told him never to wear a hat indoors. But this isn't about the bad manners of wearing a hat indoors--another pet-peeve for another time--but more importantly of the silliness of some men who insist on wearing hats to conceal their baldness.

As a follicly-challenged male, I feel qualified to comment on this practice. I myself am rarely seen outside without a hat or a cap of some kind (no berets just yet). But this is more to shield my head from the elements than from any desire to deceive anyone into thinking I have a full head of hair. I take a fair amount of grief from my family members over the way I look in a hat, but it keeps my head warm in the winter and prevents it from getting sunburned in the summer. Once inside, however, I always remove my hat. I've heard all the bald jokes and, like references to Dick Tracy, learned to live with them.

The point I'm trying to make here is that there are worse things than being bald (although none come immediately to mind). Okay, here's one: trying to fool everyone into thinking you're not. Trust me, people are going to find out eventually (are you going to wear a baseball cap to a funeral?) and then you have to endure all the gasps and stares at your forehead while you're trying to carry on a serious conversation with someone. Also bald men of the world, I have some news for you: chances are, you weren't all that much better looking when you had hair. Most of us are average-looking to begin with, and having hair or not doesn't make that much difference anyway. And in at least Ron Howard's case, the world cares a lot more about how well he makes movies than in how he looks. If it were the latter, he would have been a footnote as Opie a long time ago.

So bald men of the world, take your hats off already (at least when you're indoors). Not only is it bad manners, but no one else cares what you look like anyway.