Recently, I’ve found myself in a predicament where I scare myself every time I look in the mirror. Granted, there comes a time in everybody’s life where examining their reflection is just a bad idea in general – and I certainly reached that point years ago – but surprisingly, my current problem is unrelated to the ravages of age.
It all started about five or six years ago, when I suddenly decided that my head was without a doubt the most boring thing in the entire world, and in dire need of some additional decoration. At that point I was totally clean-shaven, including my head, since my scalp was permanently on strike from growing anything that could be considered a meaningful amount of hair. This left only my nose and glasses as potential points of interest to casual viewers, but still, that was really pushing it. To put it bluntly, my head consisted of acres and acres of boring white skin, punctuated on occasion by something equally as dreary, such as a dull green eye or a slightly misshapen ear.
As a result, I decided to grow a little facial hair, even though I had previously sworn off doing so, since it seems like that’s what all bald guys did in order to make up for their follicle-based deficiencies elsewhere. However, I justified it to myself by saying that since I spent so much time shaving my head, growing facial hair would give me some of that time back, as it would reduce the amount of upkeep needed around my mouth and chin. Genius, right?
Happily enough, Operation Facial Hair turned out be a rather rousing success, to the point where I was perfectly content with it for many years – and by that I mean up until last December. Then, one day, I suddenly decided I didn’t like it anymore. I can’t say why this was. I just looked in the mirror, frowned, and said, “Boy, that's gotta go,” and so, not long after, I was back to vaguely resembling a giant thumb.
However, as it turns out, seeing yourself without facial hair after many years of sporting it can be a very scary thing, as it seems like you’ve suddenly turned into a totally different person. Unfortunately, this was doubly-scary for me, since I don't like meeting new people. I mean, maybe the man staring back at me in the mirror was a vegetarian who despised bacon! Or, even worse, maybe he liked to talk about politics in public!
Despite being scared, I told myself to give it the ol’ “college try,” and so I did, for over an entire month. But it only sort of helped. While I did get used to seeing the new man in the mirror, things were just off. Plus, there had been a couple of times when I’d caught myself wandering into the produce section at the grocery store, which was no good. At that rate, it might not be long before I was trying to discuss foreign policy with the cashier. So, I recently decided it was time to re-implement Operation Facial Hair.
Now, you’d think this would be the end of it. It had all been an interesting experiment that had failed, and now I was going back to the status quo. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened. Instead, as my facial hair slowly returned, it too quickly began to look out of place. Yup, you guessed it, I’d grown used to being boring and clean-shaven! Aarrgh!
And so, that explains my current dilemma: I don’t like how I look clean-shaven, but I also no longer like how I look with facial hair. Both options scare me greatly, and I really don't know what to do. I guess my only hope is that eventually I’ll grow used to having facial hair again, but at this point I can’t count on it. Instead, I should probably come up with a Plan B, which may or may not include throwing out all of the mirrors in my house. Still, that’s pretty short-sighted, as there are plenty of mirrors out there in the world for me to stumble upon. On the other hand, my Finnish heritage mandates that I walk around while looking at my feet, so I don’t accidentally make eye contact with a stranger and run the risk of having to make – gulp! – small talk, so maybe I can actually manage to never look in a mirror again!
And, if not, I guess I’ll have to move on to Plan C, although I have no idea where one would buy a toupee.
