One of my favorite all-time past times is beard growing. It literally requires nothing from me. In fact, it gives me one less thing to do each day, and, in my case, within a week, every schmuck I see comments on the beard like it's some miraculous thing. There's about a two week period there where life is perfect. I get carded less. Cold winds don't seem so bad. People are even more likely to loan me their truck. It's beautiful.
And, I know, this isn't for everyone. Some people god never intended to have a beard. It grows like Cliff Clavin's wolfman beard or Joe Dirt. Other people have that forever 14 facial hair. I'm not one of them apparently. I have more hair than I know what to do with and it's pretty irritating.
As for my narrative, it all changes that first morning after the honeymoon period. I take my shower, think to myself, "should I shampoo my beard? It's getting a little big." I brush this off, but then comes those two inevitable words that mean its all over. Some witty prick comes up to me and addresses me as Grizzly Adams. I'm done then. I know I don't have the discipline to ZZ Top this thing so I have to fucking groom this thing. I don't want to groom it. The only reason I put up with this itchy patch of man-fur is because it requires nothing out of me. I might as well just shave it off if I'm going to otherwise take the time to trim it.
Sidenote: Who gave Grizzly Adams a monopoly on having a beard? Couldn't it be off season Santa or something? History is filled with great beards. Are we so stupid or lazy as a people that Grizzly Adams is the only reference we're expected to get? Most people don't even know who he is past the beard.*
* Fun fact: He's a real guy, not just from an NBC show in the 70s.
The next day, I stand there with my shaving utensils. Moment of truth. I have all this equipment for trimming because I am a man and men buy shit for beard trimming. So I start the trimming with all these covers and caps on it that give me no sense of the resulting beard length, not that I even know what beard length I'd want. And I don't know about you, but trimming when I do it is 1 part getting no hairs at all and 1 part accidentally taking out big chunks out of it, which makes me question why the fucking trimmer covers are there since they don't even work.
And, it always ends the same way. I forget to charge the damn beard trimmer, so the battery runs out. I grab a normal shaver and shave until it's all gone. Actually, it isn't that simple. The normal shaver isn't charged either, so I spend an hour shaving and charging in chunks until it's all gone. No. It's not all gone. I missed that one hair on my chin. That's gonna bother me. Best do one more run though. Several more run-throughs later I'm certain of one thing: "Never again"!
... until 10 months later, I'm on vacation, forget to shave the whole time and decide, "It couldn't hurt."
No comments:
Post a Comment