My Beard, 1989 to ??? …RIP

I celebrated no-shave November all the way from September 1989 to Blursday, the Sars-Teenth of Whenember…

copywrite, ME.

My beard is gone, yet another victim of the Coronavirus (or, as we Bostonians would have it, the Caroner-Vice). It was gray, and it was shaggy and it was not entirely tractable but it was mine and I loved it. I cleaned it, combed it, trimmed it and tried to shape it now and again over the course of these many years. Other than the great tragi-comic barbering catastro-disaster-cluster-fumble of 2003 when I had to pare it back to a Van Dyke for a short time, (a moment of silence, please…) I’ve had some version of a full beard for over 30 years.

Now I got more hair coming out of my ears than I do on my chin.

I guess it’s true what they say about getting older: dignity, looks or health; you only get to choose two — except, ha ha, you don’t get to choo-ooze at all!

The first victim of the Caroner-Vice was the hair atop. My preference is to wear it long, in a tail because that’s easiest. But societal pressures to, at least look presentable, now and again, forced me back and forth between the high-n-tight and the mop-top whatever. And it takes so long to grow it really long.

When Carved-nine-een¹ hit, the hair was in that weird in-betweeny state of maximum dork and minimum tame-ability. So, after a…