Daily Sitka Sentinel

Pure Sole: A little off the top please

    KLAS STOLPE
    PURE SOLE
    I look good bald… okay, I FEEL good bald.
    I feel so good I am making my prediction that this weekend’s Sitka Invitational swim and dive meet will be fun.
    How can a sport not be fun that allows its athletes to wear nifty swim caps with clever sayings like “Kiss My Bubbles,” or “Lost Surfer,” or “Follow Me.”
    You won’t see special slogans on other high school sports uniforms.
    No “I Dunk, Do You?” on basketball jerseys, no “Block This” on volleyball knits, no “Is That Old Spice I Smell” on wrestling singlets, no “My Coach Is Smarter Than Your AD” on letterman’s jackets.
    I confess that my Little Norway history in Petersburg involved a game of “shirts and skins” that confused participants due to the loss of the “skins” jerseys… how could we possibly know who to guard if we had no numbers? Black magic markers were not waterproof at that time.
    Now back to my experimentations with baldness and flirtations with shorter hair.
    I discovered as a commercial fisherman that month-long outings were always best with less hair as nothing gets more irritating than an itchy piece of follicle dangling along my face with fish blood attached.
    Looking at the cave wall drawings from my childhood I do note that my hair appeared to be on the short side in the crude etchings that show the invention of gum.
    It appears that gum was the scavenger of the wilds back then and feasted on the tresses atop brave young adventurers.
    Grade school required short hair as well.
    Many of the Norwegian lasses were a bit more advanced at a young age than the paler-skinned males and thus took to grasping our long Viking locks when pulverizing us on the playgrounds.
    We were easy pry in the gym class pool as well.
    Young Valkyries chose their boyfriends by swimming them down, and dunking them into the chlorine-tinged waters until we professed our devotion. Tactics they had observed other species using while hunting before school in the local glacier.
    Middle school showed that nature was not as unkind as we beaten and downtrodden Svens’ and Oles’ believed.
    Our height and weight nearly matched the Valkyries now and our speed had edged theirs.
    Hairstyle was ours to let flow in the glacier breezes.
    If I had known then what I know now, that bald is less annoying, I may have been a better warrior.
    I may have navigated the local fjords more adeptly and struck less icebergs more frequently.
    It is entirely possible I would not have mistaken my 6-foot-5 friend Erik’s backside for that of his 6-foot-6 sister Erin’s in my philandering swat, resulting in a hair pulling and pulverizing, first by Erik (for the unwanted invasion) and then by Erin (for the presumption that it would have been well received in the first place).
    I might have averaged another five points on the basketball floor if the fashion look had not been “Dutch boy on acid” that resonated around the leagues in the ‘70s.
    Inga the lead cheerleader would not have borrowed my blow dryer and accidentally ignited the leaking jars of pickled herring in our halftime feast.
    Why, I could have been somebody! Constitution. The clause gives Congress the power to ‘regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes
    All by just taking a bit more off the top, or having a slogan written on skin tight material that tidied my tresses up under it.
    Something like “Swede On Board” or “Swim Like Sven.”
    That freedom to express yourself.
    I could go without my Asgardian power source.
    A source, science experts say, could have been accumulating copper from tap water and causing hair damage.
    The skies appeared clearer; my mind was less inhibited with the seeping of catalytically active copper atoms upon millions of hair molecules; I could spot a parking niche in the harbor lot between abandoned seine nets; I could see for the first time that the mayor’s house was white; and the copper trimmings on my aunt’s bunad had a slight patina tinge.
    Info box: Did you know that patina actually protects copper, and other metals, below the surface from further corrosion and makes a good water-proofing material for roofs? -
    So my green-tinged bronze Viking hat with Styrofoam wings I made in eighth-grade art class as a gift of servitude to the women on my alma mater’s swim team can now be worn in the pool, or when running in the rain.
    Because looking good is feeling good.
    By the time you have read this, swim caps with slogans such as “Got Swim?” will have been seen at Blatchley Pool.
    I am so sure of my prognostications of the meet being fun I am willing to go out on a limb, hmmm, I know…
    I will shave my head if it is not.
    Full disclosure: I have been bald at birth (1959, Petersburg General Hospital Year of the Klas), bald by rebellion (1995, Year of the National Marine Fisheries Service IFQ program implementation) and bald by charity (2014 St. Balderick’s Child Cancer Research).