To shave or not to shave

photo by karen

I have never liked shaving. During my teaching career, I went by the every-other-day rule—or tried to. Part of the reason I shaved is because Karen wanted me to. Much as I tried to sell her on the Harrison Ford stubble (I even purchased an Indiana Jones hat!), she never bought it. Another reason I shaved is because she is right—I just can’t pull off the “beard” look. It would be a kindness to call mine scraggly. I admire a fine beard (my former student Tyler Collins has a fabulous one!). But when you look at a bearded guy, don’t you make an internal judgment as to whether he’s doing it out of a sense of aesthetics or laziness?

But we do things differently in the time of corona. With Karen’s blessing, I decided to let it grow. I had tried it once or twice before, generally when Karen was traveling to spend time with our kids/grandkids. The results were not encouraging. And it never grew long enough to stop itching! I was resigned to remaining beardless. However, now all the conditions lined up perfectly: the only people who would see me regularly were my golf cronies (who care even less about how I look than how I play), and my family on Facetime, and bi-weekly grocery store patrons. And I even had my wife’s approval.

As you can tell from my intro photo, now I have decided to let it go (the half-and-half look did have a fleeting appeal to me—wasn’t it Springsteen who sang “Two faces have I…”?). Why? I gotta admit, the not shaving was a definite perk. And grown out more fully, my beard didn’t look as bad as I expected. But the minuses outweigh the plusses. Two months on, the damn thing still itches. We’re not supposed to be touching our faces, and that’s more difficult when you have a beard. If you toss and turn in bed, the beard can become insomnial. Though you don’t have to shave, you still have to trim. And I just don’t feel quite as clean after a shower with a beard.

Me and my children still Zoom on Saturday nights. It wasn’t a group decision, but all four of the men started letting their facial hair grow when we began quarantining. Now there’s only one left (though several decisions to shave were influenced by work proprieties). Mine came off today. I look younger and Karen likes it better. It’s all good.

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