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!)