I was never a hat guy until long after the hair decided to leave the top of my head

This is me in a golf cart on the grounds of the Palace of Versailles in France, and well, I just think that's a funny sentence.

I think it was the late 80s or early 90s, but at some point, guys in my generation decided they should start wearing baseball caps.

I should say American guys made this decision, as we seem to be the only ones who have done it.

I should also add that other guys besides me started wearing hats, because until the last couple of years, I never embraced the trend.

That was partly a result of my big head. I never felt I looked all that good with a hat on. Plus, there's a certain reality to buying a hat for a large skull. Sometimes even the adjustable ones are uncomfortably tight.

I lived happily this way for decades. At the same time, starting in my mid-20s, I began losing hair on the crown of my head. This is a genetic thing and, hey, it happens.

One result was that, at least five times every spring and summer, I would be outside for an extended period and my bald spot would turn red and uncomfortable.

I've always just lived with this, never quite making the connection that, if I were to start wearing hats in the warmer months, I would not get these sunburns.

It was only when my wife strongly suggested I keep a supply of hats in my car that I started wearing them, and even then it's really just an occasional thing for me.

In fact, I'm recovering from a crown-of-the-head sunburn as I type this in mid-May because I didn't wear a hat recently when announcing a high school baseball game. The temperature was on the cool side, and apparently to my brain, that meant there was no danger of sun damage.

Which is of course silly and wrong. It doesn't have to feel hot for the sun to burn you.

So I'm trying to get myself into the hat habit. I have 3-4 baseball caps and a floppy brimmed hat in the car, all of which make me look exactly like what I am: A middle-aged suburban dad and soon-to-be grandpa trying not so much to be cool but rather to ward off melanoma from the top of my oversized head.

It's an ongoing struggle.

I'm an old guy in training

I am 42 years old, which puts me pretty solidly into the category of "middle age," I suppose. It's early middle age, but middle age nonetheless.

There are actually some advantages to this. For example, the only people who think of you as a dumb kid anymore are the ones in their 80's, and there are fewer and fewer of them left to worry about anyway. You also command a little respect from your co-workers, who are forced to acknowledge that while you are clearly a dope, you are a dope who has managed to survive for four decades, so you must have at least a few smarts in that head of yours.

Of course, the early 40's are also when most of us start to experience the physical signs of aging. There are crow's feet, some graying at the temples (and more than just the temples in my case), flab around the middle...that sort of thing. My favorite moments, though, are the memory lapses. Yes, they're frustrating, but they're also hilarious.

I regularly do that thing where I walk into a room and then have no idea what I'm doing there. I'll be strolling through the house thinking about the 1979 Cleveland Indians (I often think about the 1979 Cleveland Indians...in some future blog post I'll explain why) when suddenly one part of my brain will ask another part why we're in the basement. And the brain section being tasked to formulate an answer will instead freeze up.
"The basement? I'm in the basement? Why am I in the basement? Was it something to do with laundry? No, no, that's not it. How about the treadmill? Was I coming downstairs to run on the treadmill? Well, no, I've never once run on the treadmill, so that can't be it. Did I come to get extra rolls of toilet paper? Maybe to get something out of the freezer? How about the kids' old McDonald's  playset? Did I come to spend a few minutes pretending to be a minimum-wage fast food worker? No, no, probably not."

And so it goes, sometimes for a solid two or three minutes, during which I'll stand helplessly in the middle of the front room of the basement trying to figure out the purpose of my existence for that particular moment. Most of the time it will eventually to come me, but other times I have to admit defeat and trudge back upstairs, troubled that my short-term memory is rapidly fading.

Then there's the fact that I'm no longer The Fast Kid. For many years -- from about 6th grade through college -- my main athletic attribute was that I had foot speed. I could run, and I could run fast. These days I'll try picking up the pace when I'm out for a jog, just to regain the awesome feeling that only the competitive sprinter knows. But the gear I used to shift into just isn't there anymore. I search and search for it, but I rarely get past Chunky Suburban Dad on the velocity scale.

Not to be missed for many guys is the joy that is male pattern baldness. Ever since my early 20's, I've been steadily losing hair in a patch on top of my head. I don't think about it often because I don't usually look at the crown of my own head. But when I do, or when I see a picture of myself from the back, I'm momentarily stunned as I think, "Good Lord! Is that Bruce Willis?" And then I realize it's actually me, and I'm a little depressed for just a few seconds before I decide it's not worth worrying about and I move on.

I've never been one to look at other women much, but nowadays I do it even less. This isn't so much because I can't appreciate an attractive women anymore than the fact that I'm just too darned tired to care. "Oh look, is that Scarlett Johansson naked? Yeah, OK, fine. More importantly, do I have time for a nap?"

I don't mean to make it sound like I'm on death's door or anything. If the average life expectancy for men continues to rise, there's a good chance I'm not even halfway through my allotted span of years. Which is good, considering all of the great memories I have yet to make with my wife, my kids, my future grandkids, etc. The only thing that really scares me is that I'll die without ever having celebrated a major Cleveland sports championship, something that's truly frightening and a very real possibility.

This is the point when I generally come to some sort of conclusion and wrap up the blog post, but for the life of me, I can't remember what I was typing about in the first place...