Eulogy For A Friend

"I'm running out of friends… They're dropping like flies. I've been going through this  since the '80s. It gets to a point where you think you're gonna get used to it, but I'm not used to it. I have good health news, I bet on the track and I've been winning, and then I get that news. I get another phone call and it brings me right down. Someone from the old town I used to live in passed away and he was only 55 years old. It's pulmonary fibrosis, as common as breast cancer, but you don't hear about it."
"What's a good memory that you have of your friend?"
"Oh, man, you see my hair now? Years ago we were  much younger, back in the '80s, of course we were crazy. I made a bet with a friend, and this guy that passed away, he's the one that gave me the original shaved head. But the problem was, we were drinking a little bit and he cut me up pretty good (Laughs). And that started something that everybody did within months. Everybody had a haircut. And it started with a crazy bet, which I lost, and he ends up being the barber. He was plain clothes: he was wealthy, but clothes didn't matter to him. I went to his funeral in this old Mets hat, beat-up shirt. That was the fashion of that day, because that's what he was."