[...] In high school, my hair began thinning, and I was desperate to avoid the total Kojak by 30. My mother's hairdresser had a sure-fire cure: raw eggs, rubbed into the scalp and left in place for an hour. For several weeks every morning I sat in the kitchen, watching game shows, mashing the ingredients for chicken fetuses into my scalp, wiping away the rivulets of egg that coursed down my nose. I also used an egg shampoo. I would have tried hard-boiled enemas if there was medical evidence that it battled baldness; I was desperate.

Did it work? Yes. I was about to say no, but I realized that my hair stopped fleeing like Italian soldiers, and the eggs were quite possibly the key. But don't try this at home, as they say. Try it in public, where we can all point and laugh. [...]