The Wong Way

A loud, piercing shriek could be heard throughout the townhouse on The Peak, one Thursday morning. The shriek came from the bathroom where Solicitor Wong was taking a shower. In rushed Judy, his wife, and, there, on the floor of the shower cubicle, lay copious strands of what was, once, a new growth of hair. Solicitor Wong stood amidst the fallen strands of his hair, almost in tears. ‘What is happening to me?’ he cried out in anguish and desperation as he viewed what Judy calculated was about 10 percent of the hair that once adorned her husband’s head. ‘What soap are you using?’ Judy asked. ‘Yours! The same soapy shampoo that I always use,’ came the immediate answer. And then: ‘It’s like something out of a fairy tale. I feel that I am being punished by some evil spirit. Look!’ 

As Solicitor Wong sat, eating his toast and drinking his Chinese tea an hour later, he kept looking into a mirror. An occasional utterance left his lips: ‘My God! Why?’ Judy tried to console her husband: ‘Actually, you look rather mature with the loss of some of your hair. You look somewhat learned, now.’ Solicitor Wong just scowled at his wife as though to say: ‘Rubbish!’ Solicitor Wong’s day was spent in thinking what to do about his looks, now that it was very apparent to everybody that he was destined to join the legions of balding men who walked up and down Queensway Plaza on a daily basis. He telephoned his ‘hair-doctor’, telling him of the disaster that had befallen him in the shower. Dr Jonathan Chan told him to come for an appointment at 10 am, the following Friday. ‘This is an emergency!’ shouted Solicitor Wong into the telephone. ‘I need to see you, today. I am distraught. I cannot wait an entire week for an appointment. Who knows what else might fall off me. Today, it is the loss of a lot of hair. Tomorrow, it could be some other part of my anatomy that is about to end up on the floor of my shower stall. It is your sworn duty, in accordance with The Oath of Hippocrates, to see me, immediately. This is an emergency! ’ 

At dinner that same evening, Solicitor Wong, wearing a new hat at the table in order to hide his balding head, was extremely cheerful, much to the surprise of Judy, who had prepared herself for the worst. He announced, with a large smile that started at one ear and ended at the other one on the other side of his face: ‘Dr Jonathan Wong, my hair doctor of the last 8 years, is making a toupee for me. Within one more day, you will not recognise my disfigurement. My honour will be intact, once again.’ Nickolas, Solicitor Wong’s teenage son asked: ‘What is a toupee, father?’ ‘It is a wig,’ Judy quickly interjected. But, on looking up at her husband, she realised that she had uttered a faux pas. ‘It is not a wig!’ Solicitor Wong corrected his wife, ‘because it is made from my own hair.  Dr Jonathan Wong has been saving portions of my hair over the past  months and, now, he will be able to place those fallen strands, back on my head, the hair, being made into a toupee. A toupee is a word that comes from the 18^th Century French word, ‘toupet’. Nickolas asked: ‘Will the toupee be glued onto your head or will you have to go to the hospital to have it sewn onto your head?’ ‘Out of the mouths of children,’ Solicitor Wong remarked to his wife. 

When the lights were turned off in their bedroom, Judy said to her husband, lovingly: ‘Actually, my dear, in the half-light of this room, I cannot tell the difference between you, when you were 20 years younger, and tonight. You are the same to me. You are the man that I married, for better or for worse.’  Solicitor Wong, sat up in bed and asked:  

‘You mean “better” with my hair; and,
worse, without it?