A hirsute tale

Sometime in April, one misstep led to another and after nearly 42 clean-shaven years, I decided to find out what nature had blessed (or cursed) me with in the facial-hair department.

Within a week I'd blown past The George Michael (greasy kids' stuff) and with shaggy grays coming in, I was hurtling towards The Dr. K.

(Whereupon, let us pause for the
[famous] 1996 haiku:
Open your present
No, you open your present
Kaczynski Christmas)

By the 6- or 7-week mark, I started getting the occasional compliment. (It was all polite silence before.) I took a couple of self-portraits. Still, I continued to hear a little involuntary shriek every time I passed one colleague's office.

One comment I received: "You're looking more and more like your Savior!" High praise indeed. I'd been leading a class using the "Gospel of John" film of 2003, ... so I know I could never approach THAT hunky look (or so Suvia tells me). But on rereading the prophet Isaiah, I perceived the commenter's devious intent:

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

At about the 60-day mark, I began to worry that -ummm- The Charles Darwin was looming. And beyond that, what -- The Billy Gibbons? It was time for a trim. But wait; I'd started the beard in hopes of avoiding that kind of maintenance.

...so I chickened out. Beard's gone. I sort of miss it already: I never realized I had such a weak chin! Here, then, is the conclusion of the matter: some are genetically gifted; beards are for the rest of us. I think I'm growing a new one already.