The Way Things Used To Be 13

The Penguin 2
Continued from The Penguin 1

A few weeks after he began treatment, Blue Book actually did begin losing his hair, and at a pretty rapid rate. I tried to tell him so in a tactful way, but he insisted it was all part of the plan.

"That always happens at the start of treatment. The Mayo Scalp Clinic programs a certain degree of hair loss. That's the unhealthy hair. Soon I'll be getting second growth. The objective is to keep your root system intact. Once that goes you're bald forever!"

Ordinarily Blue Book was the most skeptical and hard-headed guy on the block--a Yankee fan who bet against the Yankees when he thought the odds were wrong--the only guy in the neighborhood who said Jersey Joe Walcott beat Joe Louis.  But after two months of going down to Columbus Circle three times a week at $6.50 per treatment?

He'd bought a Mayo Hair Clinic scalp vibrator and he'd bought one of their patent-applied-for Root System Stimulators, which had the outward appearance of a hairbrush. He vibrated his scalp and stimulated his root system a hundred strokes in each direction before he went to bed at night and again in the morning. But that's always the way; once you hook a skeptic you've got his skepticism working for you.  Nothing was going to shake Blue Book's sense of conviction.

He'd appointed himself the neighborhood hair expert, too. Every time he saw you he'd do a 360 around you and give you a new estimate on how many years you had before you started going bald.  If he saw he had you worried, he tried to talk you into going down to The Mayo Scalp Clinic for their complimentary free consultation.

Matt said the Mayo Hair Clinic probably had some Member Get a Member deal going and that Blue Book would get a discount for every new customer he roped in, but I knew it was just his sense of conviction, which could get pretty relentless once he started trying to help you.

 To be continued in The Penguin 3