Not so long ago, I wrote about growing a beard. I listed 10 disadvantages and 15 advantages. I now want to add one more to each list:
Disadvantage
You don't know what has happened to your face in the intervening years.
Advantage
You don't (want to) know what has happened to your face in the intervening years.
I do. On Monday morning I had nothing to do, except lie in bed tugging at my ... beard. Stupidly, nay, very stupidly, I yielded to the temptation of shaving it off. After taking a pair of hedge clippers to my face, burning out the electric motor and resorting to scissors and razors, I finally managed to hack my way through the jungle and reach the gleaming pearly skin.
It wasn't pleasant. Looking back at me from the mirror was a moon-faced old man!!! I'd only had the beard for 2 years, but my self-image - of which I was absolutely convinced - was that underneath all that hair there lurked a rather sprightly youngster, all cheekbones and jawline and quite possibly the same as the one that glared out of photos taken of me in my Gothic phase from the 1980s, with perhaps a little (OK, a lot) less hair on top.
Nothing of the sort. I saw my father. No man wants to be like his father, so this came to me as a bit of a nasty shock. And it was a shock to my children. I sent them a photo and asked them their opinion. Suffice it to say that it frightened my youngest daughter.
I've decided to re-grow my (much-missed) beard and keep it. Permanently. When I take off my tartan slippers for the last time, curl up my toes and am cremated, the place is going to stink of burnt (facial) hair. Never again will I commit such barbaric barbery. This spell of momentary madness has set me back at least a year in my fantasy of growing a beard long enough to plait. Ho hum.
Disadvantage
You don't know what has happened to your face in the intervening years.
Advantage
You don't (want to) know what has happened to your face in the intervening years.
I do. On Monday morning I had nothing to do, except lie in bed tugging at my ... beard. Stupidly, nay, very stupidly, I yielded to the temptation of shaving it off. After taking a pair of hedge clippers to my face, burning out the electric motor and resorting to scissors and razors, I finally managed to hack my way through the jungle and reach the gleaming pearly skin.
It wasn't pleasant. Looking back at me from the mirror was a moon-faced old man!!! I'd only had the beard for 2 years, but my self-image - of which I was absolutely convinced - was that underneath all that hair there lurked a rather sprightly youngster, all cheekbones and jawline and quite possibly the same as the one that glared out of photos taken of me in my Gothic phase from the 1980s, with perhaps a little (OK, a lot) less hair on top.
Nothing of the sort. I saw my father. No man wants to be like his father, so this came to me as a bit of a nasty shock. And it was a shock to my children. I sent them a photo and asked them their opinion. Suffice it to say that it frightened my youngest daughter.
I've decided to re-grow my (much-missed) beard and keep it. Permanently. When I take off my tartan slippers for the last time, curl up my toes and am cremated, the place is going to stink of burnt (facial) hair. Never again will I commit such barbaric barbery. This spell of momentary madness has set me back at least a year in my fantasy of growing a beard long enough to plait. Ho hum.
When I first became a teacher, one of my new colleagues wore a beard. During the following vacation, he shaved it off and when I next saw him I naturally exclaimed "You've shaved your beard off!" His reaction was "That's interesting."
ReplyDeleteEr, what was interesting? Well, apparently, those colleagues who had known him before and after he grew a beard hardly noticed that he had shaved it off again and none thought to remark on the fact. Only new acquaintances who had known him only with the beard noticed when he removed it.
I think that what horrifies you and your children is less the loss of the beard per se than the radical change in your image. You have grown accustomed to your bearded self seen daily in the mirror and your children even more so because you have been bearded for a greater fraction of their lives than even of your own. To them, your clean-shaven face is not the face of their father. They, and you, would get used to the new face, however, and quite quickly too. It's like jumping into the sea and feeling the shock of the cold: either jump out again quickly or persist and become used to it.