To Beard Or Not To Beard, That Is The Question?
My face & I have been together for over 29 years now. In that time we’ve got along pretty well. It’s got holes where my eyes go, an opening for me to insert food &, apart from a few tough years in my teenage period when it decided to be completely repulsive to the opposite sex, I’m quite pleased with it. The problem is it’s all rather familiar. Since hitting the age of 18 my face hasn’t changed all that much & I’m getting rather sick of looking at it. They do say that variety is the spice of life, so I’m changing it up a little bit.
In the RN there are some archaic rules & regulations about beards & the growing of said facial fuzz. To grow a beard you have to raise the required paperwork & obtain permission from your Divisional Officer & the a member of the Service Police, I kid you not. If the permission is forthcoming, you are issued a piece of paper that you carry on your person & can present to someone if they challenge your stubbly appearance. Then the beard growing can commence. After a period of around a month, your whiskers are assessed. If you have managed to grow a suitable covering of fur you are allowed to keep it. If not, then you are forcibly made to shave.
Needless to say, whilst in the service I never bothered to go through the hassle. Instead I have shaved nearly every day for the past 11 years. That is until last week. I was off work for a while on a course down in London & for some reason just didn’t go through the daily routine of scraping a sharp piece of metal over my grid. My wife actually said she liked me with a little bit of stubble. That was over a week & a half ago & the stubble has continued unabated.
I’m getting scared that, what is rapidly turning into a beard, has developed a life all of it’s own. Like Skynet, it has become self-aware & will do anything to protect its own existence. I have purchased a stubble trimmer that promises to sculpt my facial hair into all manner of eye pleasing shapes but so far have been too afraid to use it. The one advantage is I find stroking my chin whilst pondering the meaning of life, love & in what series Red Dwarf became an epic fail to be an immensely pleasurable experience. This has the dangerous side effect though of being overcome by an urge to sow leather patches onto the elbows of my jackets & take up pipe smoking.
I fear that no matter what I decide, it’s all going to end in tears. My wife appears to be on the brink of issuing the ultimatum that I can have a beard or I can have sex. I can’t have both. Hmmmm…….much beard stroking ahead me thinks.
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