tag archive: beard

I’m still working on the goat.

My daughter likes it and wants to see more. My wife has “gotten used to it” and has the opposite desire. I think she’s concerned that the hairs will start striking out for adventures farther south, maybe to meet up with the sparse colony of chest hairs residing there.

After last year’s holiday beard-growing attempt, I had little desire to try it ever again, but I idly threatened it recently when I realized I had gone five days without shaving. My wife didn’t respond. Her first reaction whenever I have a brilliant idea is, “ignore it and hope it goes away.”

I thought about it. Maybe I just have an ugly beardling phase to get through before I can blossom into a hairy swan. But it seems unlikely. And I didn’t want to put my family, small children, and complete strangers through all that again.

Genetics has been kind to me in many ways, but she hasn’t granted me the ability to grow a manly beard. This picture represents almost two weeks of diligent hair-growing effort, the longest by far I had ever “worked” at this activity.

I had to take this photo myself because my wife refused to look at me by this stage of the “infestation,” as she called it. My mom was already scandalized on the fourth or fifth day of The Growing, falling as it did on Christmas Eve last year.