Here’s my beard.
Ain’t it weird?
Don’t be sceered,
It’s just a beard.
– George Carlin
As I quickly approach my 60th birthday this month I thought I’d push the boat out and give facial hair a chance. For many years as a younger man I was mustachioed, then one day for no real reason I shaved it off. It took a significant amount of deliberation before I put blade to lip, but what convinced me was the realization that, unlike an amputated limb, facial hair grows back!
My wife is not a fan of men with facial hair, but she is being very understanding – no doubt a birthday gesture. I have stuck with the growth through the itchy stage when there were times I thought I would pull the whiskers out by hand. On the bus.
I must admit I was a wee bit startled to see just how white my beard is. But I guess that goes with the turf. But the real shock came a day ago when I got a hair cut. My wife, perhaps in a subliminal attempt to convince me to shave, suggested I may look like a terrorist with my usual very short hair and beard.
Well, she needn’t have worried because when I looked in the mirror I realized that I looked nothing like a terrorist, but that I now looked uncannily like the child’s toy from many years ago, Wooly Willy.
Wooly Willy was a simple toy consisting of a cardboard image of a bald eyebrow-less Willy; a bunch of metal filings covered with plastic. The filings were moved with a magnet to make beards, moustaches, eyebrows, and hair. If only I could get back some of hair that easily! I hope that if I have to look like him I can at least develop his ‘magnetic personality’
