I wondered how long it would take to reach this pre-Dumbledore point in facial farce-itude and then I forgot about it until recently. I was amazed at how much this particular facial arrangement hurt. The rubbery hair-band, not traded with the post-lice-infested girls, yanked at my chin in the way that Joan Rivers must have often experienced facial-tugging. No worries for those of you who care about such things as my personal appearance: I only wore this for the photo. For a photo of this week's beard stick around until the bottom of the page.
I was back at the Zoo this week after many months away and all the people who only see me there during the Summer got a full-facial of the beard in all its chinny glory. Everything that happened gradually over the months of school happened in one glorious week at the Zoo. The reactions ran the usual gamut of shock and awe, but I have to relate one here in its entirety because it captured the greatest beard moment thus far.
It began when I ran into one of the custodians/grounds crew men at the Zoo. He and I have been friendly over the years, telling each other of zoo adventures and family things--he's always curious about why we do the weird things (blonde hair dye, head-shavings, lightning bolt facial hair) we do at Camp so we chat about that often.
He saw me coming out of the Camp tent and he stopped cold...
"Whoa! You grew a beard...!"
"Oh yeah, I just let it go."
"Wow, and that's...that's a different kind of beard too!"
"Yeah, I have heard that one a few times."
"Yeah, man, you look like a Quaker or something."
"Heard that one too."
"You know, if you trim it up, it will look...well, it will look..., it will actually look nice."
Much of the rest of the conversation followed that tone, as he tried to convince me I looked terrible and I eased him into the fact that I could care less. Such is life....
No comments:
Post a Comment