I no longer have what you would call a full, thick head of hair. Yet after I shower, it’s so tangled I can’t get a comb through it. How can this be?

If I were an impatient man, I might yank my comb through it, pulling out some of the not-so-many hairs I have left. Occasionally in the mirror I see such a man holding a comb and staring back at me.

When I am reduced to three hairs on my head, I feel certain that, after a shower, they’ll be knotted in a dreadlock that will require whatever patience I have left to separate.

I repeat: how can this be?

Below, the head of hair I once had.