Sympathy Beard

Beverage: cold beer

Toast: to fellowship!

I got in the other night and didn't feel like doing much. It got to be Sunday and was scratching my neck in the bathroom mirror, deciding what to do. You can't go a week without shaving and expect to do it in the morning and get to work on time. If I was to shave, it had to be Sunday.

I ran the water and got out my trimmer. It was the one that a couple days earlier I had used on my father. I looked at the trimmer and back to the mirror. Fuck this, I said. I trimmed up my head and under my neck but left the beard. Then I switched to a razor and worked the jaw line and cleaned up my noggin.

I scrutinized my work. It was very tempting to clean up the cheeks or to thin out the mustache. Once again I told myself to stop being a baby and let that sucker grow.

 

The summer of my senior year in HighSchool I worked at a camp for sad, rich boys. About halfway through the season, nearly all of counselor decided to engage in a beard-growing contest. It was awesome. Beards of all sizes and stripes. Each beard was like its owner. Some sturdy and workmanlike. Others fanciful and full of longing.

In a couple cases, the studliest jocks in the camp grew the wimpiest threadbare beards. How we laughed at them. There were many opinions offered about how to best grow beards. Everyone would offer the poor beardless men advice as to the diet and exercise routines that were most conducive to facial growth. But good beard or bad, we were in it together and that part felt great.

At the end of summer we wrote a song about it to the tune of Over There:

Facial hair! Facial hair!

Looking tough! Beardy scruff! Facial Hair!

Cuz the beards are growing, but Doug's ain't showing-

He can't grow it anywhere!

We sang it with gusto. Even Greg.

Posted with Blogsy