Week Twenty-Six: February 22nd

"Daddy, why are you smearing Vaseline on your beard?"

And so began my week-long adventure wearing "I Am The Walrus." Though I did not spend hours each morning slathering the tusks with petroleum jelly, I had no need to: beard hair is so coarse, the slime wanted no part of letting go of my beard for the next few days.

Though normally apt to play with my beard or stroke my facial hair, this week's entry may have cured me of both habits. I don't know that I realized I had this habit, until a few years ago one of my students turned to me as I was listening to him read and said, "Will you please stop that?" Of course, that only made me more likely to do it during subsequent visits, just to irk him in my own amusing little way. He got to the point that he would just glance and glare at me in mid-sentence and I would laugh, stopping briefly.

Of course, I did not have walrus tusks back in those days. Past shaving accidents even left me with one tusk longer than the other, in true walrus fashion. Male walruses (or walri, as some call them) battle for ice-floe and shoreline supremacy. Using tusks and girth, they will shove and grunt and try to carve their opponents to bloody sausage in the manner of elephant seals. Of course, walrus males have hardly the tenacity of elephant seals. Theirs is more like a Sunday couch-potato nacho bowl battle by comparison.

My current students, so used to the leaf-rake-sounding beard-stroking that they don't even hear it anymore, did not even notice the tusks. On Friday, someone touched my face, causing me to say,"You know, not everyone likes to have his face touched; and I am one of those people." This brought attention to my face for the first time, prompting another student to ask if they were wings. When I told him they were walrus tusks, that touched off a clamor that took several moments to quell.

At the end of the day, one other boy asked me if I was trying to grow a different beard each week over these past few weeks. I snorted and replied that I have grown a new beard for each of the first 26 weeks of school! Everyone gathered around and gaped. Could this be possible? They are beginning to learn that I enjoy making many things possible. Strange things included.

Week Twenty-Five: February 15th

If you are anything like me, and let's hope for your sake that you are not, you shot out of bed on Saturday mornings and digested as many consecutive hours of cartoons as you could. Sometimes I arose too early and saw nothing but repeat programming and shows that seemed to play a day too early: hello 700 Club! If I was only slightly early, I would catch the Captain, Kangaroo, that is, or, in later years some repeats of Painting with Bob Ross. Anyone unfamiliar with that stroke of television brilliance, in other words anyone outside of a certain range within New England, knows nothing of happy little clouds, soothing voices, Alizarin Crimson and amazing white-fros. If ever I had the coif-capabilities....

On those long Saturdays, full of animated mayhem, would occasionally appear a show that pre-dated any glorified reality garage shows of the current time period. It was called "Choppers," and was the Easy Rider of cartoons: nothing more than souped-up motorcycles (with faces and voices, of course) cruising around from place to place, having adventures.

Sure, it was no different from so many other cartoons of the day. If all stories since Shakespeare have been accused of borrowing his storylines--something of which he is also accused--then all cartoons of my youth followed the same formula. Not only from episode to episode but between shows! Space Ghost, Captain Caveman, Scooby Doo, and many, many more, all followed the same structure: one hero, however inept, surrounded by a crew of competent, or incompetent, others. They solve mysteries, problems, dilemmas, in-fighting, disagreements and whatever other name you can derive for the "serious" problems of the time.

Choppers was certainly no exception. They had a central hero, but downplayed his role as they tried to promote the importance of the free-ranging, countryside-roaming group dynamic. Regardless of their special skill, and we of that age learned well that each member of a group brought a certain special skill--one that no one else could possibly contribute--all members worked together to solve the problem and save the day, make the county fair happen, rescue the missing kids, uncover the hidden treasure and, especially, defraud the mystery of the ghost town.

All I knew was I would own a motorcycle like that when I was older. When I reached a certain age, and cartoons were no longer cool (or at least we would not freely advertise our continuing admiration for the genre) I turned my attention to the only "bikes" I would ever ride. Despite my numerous attempts to learn to ride a bike, it was a skill that took me years (and many tears) to master. My friends could ride bikes before they entered Kindergarten, in the manner of so many coordinated boys, but my banana-seated, stiff-wheeled, orange-flagged bicycle would not yield to my unbalanced demands.

At one point, when I had all but given up hope that I would learn to ride any bike, I spied a kid in my neighborhood with a Chopper-style bike. I never said a word to anyone, knowing this might advertise my continuing allegiance to the show, but damn it, I KNEW if I had that bike, I would learn to ride with ease.

Week Twenty-Four: February 8th

Seeking a departure from the humdrum entries of the past few weeks, I figured "Lightning Strikes Twice" would get some notice. I was not disappointed. Out of the shower for about thirty minutes, I was at a store getting some dinner supplies and one of the baggers abandoned his duties, jumped out in front of me and gave the double-thumbs-up, saying, "Awesome beard, man!" Imagine if I had kept the hair....

If not for the trim-down caused by the "Two Clogs" I might have been able to force the bolts higher up the jaw and created sharper angles for the truly jagged look, but it was serviceable all the same. Our older daughter, who hears the razor fire up and dashes into the bathroom each week to provide commentary, told me it looked like skeleton fingers. (She and I rarely agree on the title, nor what it actually looks like.) If only I'd had the temerity to attempt another beard-dyeing, I would have completed the look with a thorough bolt-bleaching. Of course, having tried that in the past and survived with fried nose hairs and semi-charred skin, I can attest to the truth on the package warnings when they tell you to apply "only to your scalp." Then again, with how much my scalp feels Botoxed after each bleaching, I can only imagine the lasting damage I have done to my head. I am not bald (yet) and have retained remarkable hold on my hair after nearly 37 years of life (during the last decade of which my hair has absorbed countless episodes of chemical abuse at the hands of Loreal and Nivea bleaching products.)

The only ones unimpressed with the look were my students, though, to give them the benefit of the doubt, we did have only three days of school this week after missing Tuesday with a snow day and Friday to a day we spent writing report cards. (And we naive children used to wonder how we got all those four-day weekends.) I thought that with the big-screen debut of the wildly popular Percy Jackson series, the kids might pick up on my tepid shout-out to the bolts of Zeus. No such luck. I did get the usual array of looks from kids and adults around the building, most of whom are still mustering the courage to question my grooming habits. (If I receive a going-away razor at the end of this year, my efforts will have been worth it!)

Week Twenty-Three: February 1st

Beards: Amsterdam-style. I am a big fan of concept-beards, a fact that is all-too obvious to anyone who reads these postings even semi-regularly. Some concepts get noticed. Some stand out. Some win approval with their creative subtlety. And some pass with utter confusion and pitying glances.

This beard falls into the latter category. Though I always know what is going on with my facial hair, anyone who sees me enough cannot quite place a finger on the variations, or the strangeness (and let's assume the strangeness of the facial hair is what befuddles them. I am perfectly normal to me. Aren't we all?)

"Two Clogs On A Wire" made perfect sense to me, but was not as easy to craft as I had envisioned. Seemed like a good idea at the time... what some would argue should be my personal motto, fit the bill on this beard. For the first time, I am including two photos so you can see the right-hand clog (the more successful one) and the leftover patches that represent the craggy borders of The Netherlands. Yes, that one took some time...!

Much like the "Man" so many people claim to see in the Moon, one must use imagination--what English teachers would call "suspension of disbelief"--to see the hard-cork heel near my chin and the rounded toe between my earlobe and jawline. Kudos to you if noticed the large hole at the top through which you would slip your foot in this laceless beard.

Because this looked more like a shaving accident gone bad, I got several second and sideways glances throughout the week: Did he miss a spot? How well do I know him; can I tell him about those stray hairs above the rest of the beard? What in the world is that thing on his chin--is that, no it couldn't be, and yet I think it is...The Netherlands?

Though the thick mustache serves as the "wire" in this motif, it hardly resembled one. If I had to lay blame on one aspect of the beard that did not work, it was that one. For, as we all know, the fault could not lie in the hand (and razor) of the shaver. No, his hand is steady and true, even if his vision and his mind are not.