I am doing some work for the the San Francisco uber rich. It’s a small carpentry job I landed after making friends with a client of an ex-employer. I wont mention any names because I do not want to infringe their privacy (they do trust me in their home), but I will say that they are on the top of Nob Hill, and to get there you enter an elevator that only goes to three stops, all of which are labeled by family name in gold plaques next to the buttons. My clients have two of these floors.

It’s been fun peering into the lives of the well-to-do, but their children are what really fascinate me. They have two precocious blue eyed kids. These children are beautiful. Six and eight years old, boy and girl respectively. They are clad in high fashion clothes, already have iPhones, and the older one has a MacBook Air. All this alone keeps my eyes glued to them, but the real strange thing is, they have no hair.

That’s right. These kids are bald. But I didn’t even know it until I was wrapping up some work in kitchen (they have an overly complicated custom Italian, modern cabinet system, and the kids have pulled every door out of true) when the boy came running in with his hair in his hands. What he held was a blond child’s wig, and his head was totally bald. He came in complaining about his sister.

“Mom, ——– cut my hair”.

“What?” Exclaimed the mother, who took hold of the wig and then marched into the the bedroom wing where the kid had come. The sister was in big trouble, for obvious reasons. I had no idea that the little boy had ever been wearing a wig. I instantly figured him a cancer patient, and realized that his parents spared no expense in outfitting him with the finest natural hair pieces.  But listening to the conversation just down the hall, things took a strange twist.

I could plainly hear the mother scolding, but what she was really upset about was baffling. She was going on about how the two children were not going to match. She was talking about the little girl’s hair now, and she was saying that she was going to have to find something different to wear. Some different hair. The more I listened, the more evident it became that both of these children wore hair pieces.

I was able to verify this on my way out. I packed up my tools and slipped down the hall to announce my departure. I tiptoed down a passage I had never been before, century old hardwood wainscoting, super plush wool carpet, priceless paintings. If they found me sneaking I was just going to pretend I was looking for them to bid farewell for the day. From halfway down the hall I peeked into the bedroom that they were in. I saw the mom fussing over a wig on a model head. And then I caught a glimpse of the white skull of the little girl.

I felt awkward now, so I just turned around and silently made my way out, but it has been on my mind ever since. What disease do these children have? Could they both be in chemotherapy. What are the odds of that?

It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that is polite to ask, so I guess I may never know.