An Ode to Facial Hair

[A note to readers: Don’t worry, we haven’t abandoned more serious topics on the Blog, but everyone needs a break one in a while.]

Here’s a little tidbit that people who know me already know. When it comes to my appearance, I am a creature of utter habit.

Sometime mid-way through high school I haphazardly decided on some mix of clothing style and haircut and, well, really never changed it much since. On any given day you can pretty much rely on the fact that I am wearing blue jeans, some species of blue button down collar cotton shirt, sneakers and blue socks (from the GAP, no commercial endorsement implied). My haircut is also always the same, that sort of Jim-needs-a-haircut look.

The only variance all these years has been facial hair. For better than two decades I wore a beard. I grew it at 19 because I thought it was cool and then let it become ingrained as part of my identity (my college nickname was “Jim Bear”, a vast improvement on the one I was burdened with in Junior High, “Gym Shorts”, get it?). A couple of times during those many years I whacked it off. The first time, at age 28, my reaction as I stared in the mirror was “right, we went to high school together.”

Later, married and with kids, the shock was all theirs. The first time my older kids saw me beardless (I pounced unannounced from a long shearing episode in the bathroom) my son looked like he’d seen a ghost and my daughter cried for half an hour. Oops.

At 40, when the fuzz on my face turned white on me, leaving me looking like a skinny Santa Claus, my beard and I went separate ways. No one here in Bolivia ever saw me any other way. Well, until now. I just grew it back, which means that that photo off to the right is no longer the real deal.

It is interesting getting people’s reactions to you changing your appearance (perhaps more interesting for someone who never does). A taxi driver I know told me yesterday that now I can cut in the front of the line at banks, along with the other senior citizens. Bolivia kindly has a law that allows for elders to cut. My ear doctor told me that I look like Earnest Hemmingway. But I don’t seem to write any better (as evidenced by this Blog posting).

Younger people, with a few exceptions, definitely don’t like it. Older people mostly do. Hmmm, which side do I really want t be on? My three year old – who has had the advantage over her siblings of watching it grow gradually as opposed to having it loped off suddenly – likes to touch it. That’s a problem for me as well. When you suddenly have a mop of hair covering your face after not having had one for almost a decade, it is pretty darn hard to stop fiddling with it. I suddenly remind myself of all those girls in elementary school who liked to chew their hair.

I am pretty convinced that my new beard – as white as Santa’s – is going to have a short life. At 28 it didn’t matter so much that I could whack ten years off my appearance with a few minutes and a Gillette (again, no commercial endorsement implied). At 48, well, it might be nice to not look like someone AARP is desperately trying to track down.

But don’t worry; the blue shirts, sneakers, and Levi 501s (no…well you know the disclaimer by now) are here to stay. Well, unless I get crazy one day and try a collar without buttons.