Careful what you put on your head.

Rogaine is great. It gives you hair, and that's a good thing, right? Well...yes. But as with so many other great products you can buy in modern life, it pays to read the fine print, and this is definitely no exception.

In print so small my nephew probably couldn't read it without a magnifying glass, we get to the good stuff:

DO NOT USE IF:

* You are a woman.

Check. No breasts.

* You have no family history of hair loss.

Check. You could use my grandpa's head for a mirror.

* Your hair loss is sudden and/or patchy.

Check. No nuclear accidents in this area lately.

* You do not know the reason for your hair loss.

Well...I'm NOT really sure why it's going away, and I don't really care. I just want some back. I didn't know I had to be a doctor.

* You are under 18 years of age.

Check. If I'm under 18 years of age and losing my hair, I'm going to pitch in the towel and go Moby anyway, because there isn't much hope.

And it goes on in that vein for a few more items. Then it gets serious, warning me that I should ask a doctor if I have heart disease. Say what? Hair...heart...I'm not getting an important connection here, I think.

Then it warns you not to "apply to other parts of your body". Yeah, because I WANTED more hair in my armpits and nose. Good thing they warned me. A couple more warnings, and then the really juicy stuff:

STOP USE AND ASK A DOCTOR IF:

* Chest pain, rapid heartbeat, faintness or dizziness occurs.

Naw, I think I'll just go on doing whatever I was doing if that stuff happens. Sheesh.

* Sudden, unexplained weight gain occurs.

I see. It's all really just a scam some fat farm cooked up to drum up business. Has anybody checked to see whether the same company that owns Rogaine also owns Bowflex?

* Your hands or feet swell.

Unless you're blowing on your thumb, of course. At least then you know what's causing it.

* Scalp irritation or redness occurs.

That is the single symptom in the entire list that doesn't worry me too much.

* Unwanted facial hair growth occurs.

Too late. I've already spent like $3000 on razors, cream, and various lotions over the last 25 years because of that very symptom.

Look, people, maybe this whole hair loss thing isn't that bad after all. I mean, next thing they'll discover that if you use too much, your pancreas will rot and your eyeballs will deflate or something. Is it really worth it? Maybe the ball-bearing look isn't so bad after all.

But Rogaine knows something you never really thought about. Men are just as vain as women, and many of us have our vanity surgically implanted in our hair follicles. If there's something that will bring back lost hair, taking it away from a man is like taking away a junky's fix. I'm surprised they don't sell this stuff on the street corner.

"Tell you what, I'll give you the first month for free, buddy."

Maybe I have a future career as a Rogaine pusher. But I think I'll keep my day job for now.

Big Hairy Deal

Different men react to losing their hair differently. Some of us panic, and will do anything, go anywhere, work any magic spell or spend any amount of money to keep from losing their hair or regain hair they've lost. Those are the people that join the "Hair Club for Men".

For some men, hair doesn't matter. Some of us even look better without it. I'm willing to bet the mushroom cap look didn't hurt Telly Savalas or Moby with the ladies. It wasn't half bad on Bruce Willis. Heck, it would probably improve the sex lives of half the guys out there, if I'm any judge of how guys usually do their hair when they have it.

I was usually pretty ambivalent about my hair, at least since the 80s croaked and left me with a gigantic mop of hairspray-encrusted stuff on my head. Since it became uncool to have hair bigger than the woman you're dating (and probably bigger than her rottweiler as well), I've sort of shrugged my shoulders and got it cut whenever I couldn't stand the nagging from my significant other/mom. When I got it cut, I really got it hacked, because I didn't want to mess with it any more than I had to.

But that was before I noticed that there was more hair in my drain every morning than on my dog's brush, and I wondered if I might have accidentally gotten radiation poisoning or something. It was unnerving...and it got worse. My hairline receded until I wondered if perhaps I would end up with something that looked more like a bonnet.

The other irritating thing is that while some of the hair that I took for granted all my life was gradually going AWOL, there were new recruits coming from the oddest places. The edges of my ears. The tip of my nose. My nostrils and ears started to look like some strange kind of grass bouquets. And don't get me started on my back. Caveman city.

But the thing that really got me thinking was when I went into one of those dressing rooms in the store where there are lots of mirrors. You know, the ones where you can be like the whole Rockette dance group and do high kicks, and watch the whole line of you into forever doing it?

Okay, I don't really do high kicks in the dressing room at the local clothing store. I'd probably need an ambulance if I tried. But I did get a room where there were angled mirrors at the tops of the walls, and through the strange multi-bank shot view noticed that while my head still looked like a forest (despite the deforestation some rogue farmers had visited on the edges, especially on the side of the face, and the extra brush that seems to want to grow on the opposite side on the neck), there was an area spang in the middle of that forest that looked like the trees there might be coming down with some sort of disease. Maybe they were elms. Anyway, age was visibly catching up with me.

Enter Rogaine®. I took the plunge. I discovered it wasn't nearly as expensive as I had thought, so I went for a few months of the foam to try it out.

Next column: be careful with that Rogaine...