Hair today, gone ... not just yet.

[Urban Hermit]

Well ... it's been gone a few hours now ... I'm about to go shave the remaining stubble. It's odd to feel the breeze that close to the jaws again; been at least a decade since the last time I shaved down to the skin.

I usually feel the need to set folks straight in that I never set out to grow a beard. I just set out to stop shaving - the beard is merely a 'side effect' of that.

Anecdote:

• My mother always used to call men with beards and moustaches, scruffy, dirty and other such things. She used to go on, at great length some times, about how no man living under her roof would grow a beard. Then I stopped shaving due to numerous factors, mostly the rebellious nature of my personality combined with hating the idea of having an electric razor buzzing around my face, yanking out hairs it wouldn't cut, and generally raising a helluva racket in my head, so much so that only the voices living in there could be heard above it.
  
  I stopped shaving. Hairs grew upon the lower part of my face where a razor used to buzz.
  
  Mum was not the type to go over the top without a slow boil, so she would glare at me and shake her head, tsk-tsking. She'd make sure the razor case was next to the sink in the mornings, close by should I forget and just shave as a matter of course like a decent young man, or whatever ...
  
  Then the summer rolled around and like I had done the summers before - like my older brother had also done in previous summers - I went to work in the Fiberglas factory as 'summer holiday schedule' labour. After a hot, humid summer's night - with glas bits, and various resins, binders, and other chemicals floating about the air in the workplace - I went home and crashed into a restless sleep. When I awoke, I decided that shaving for the summer was better than the itching and clumping caused by the airborn pollutants. So I shaved the beard off. No emotional attchment to it - I didn't grow it after all, it just grew itself.
  
  I went downstairs and mum looked over at the new-old me. I pointed to the jowls and in a disinterested tone of voice, I asked her "so, happier now?"
  
  Of course her reply couldn't be anything but: "No. I liked your beard."[/list:u]
  
  Who CAN'T win?
  Me; that's who.
  
  Anecdote ends.
  
  Time for a shave.
  

 

[Fido]

You need a new avatar now!

 

[Urban Hermit]

Hair gone ... not back just yet.

I'm trying this one out for now.

[attachment=0]

Though I might change it fairly soon if I get an even better idea (or if someone already uses Mr. Stay-Puft, and I've somehow missed noticing it); we'll see ...