#89 🐰 DRAW on that experience 🥪

Grow it back

My daughter Ida (recently 10) has never really seen my face. When she was little I had a man-lost-in-the-wilderness-for-aeons beard, and although I have it trimmed shorter of late, the length can fluctuate from close-crop to full-wizard. My wife Vic, who I’d say is my primary target audience, prefers the beard over the face.

Yet. Every now and then I catch a glimpse of the now-mostly-white beard at an unpleasant angle in a photo or mirror, and see that the beard-assisted elongation of an already long face morphs me into a caricature: an enormous white grain of rice on top of a neck. Or a past-his-use-by-date geography teacher.

It’s in these moments of weakness that I catch the electric-beard-clipper madness. I’ll hack the beard right back to a number 1 length, quick as I can, before I have time to hesitate. (I never go right back to the skin with a razor, because that would be insanity. Can you imagine? A blade scraping against your facial skin? Some people do this every morning. I think we should all keep them in our thoughts, and volunteer to help brainstorm better uses of their ante-meridiem free time.)

Although the nearly gone beard feels good for a short time – a tiny rebellion, even – Vic and Ida will inevitably spot me and say something like “Oh, no” or “Oh, okay” (that cynical okay cuts more keenly than any razor) and I’ll feel the first pricks of regret. Then, for the next few weeks, I have to come to terms with life without a discernible chin, which is my punishment for rashness and ignoring my target audience.

In response to the heightened face visibility of a trimmed beard, I’ve heard more than one colleague say, with hesitation: “It’s going to take me a while to get used to.” On the only occasion when I not only removed the beard but actually shaved with a razor down to the skin, a work friend took me to one side, lowered her voice, and said: “You need to grow that back right now. Fast.”