Mid-November

It's one thing for growth to happen at irregular rates. I, for one, was a slow-grower. Though I experienced frequent physical growing pains in my legs as a lad, I rarely saw an physical pay-off in the experiences. I actually entered high school just over five feet tall and would eventually skyrocket, in incremental doses, over the next five years, to the towering height of 5'8". Even within my elementary school building, peopled as it is with ladies and children, I am still not a tower of physical stature by any means. In fact, most of the ladies with whom I work are of equal or greater height and the kids who have passed through the school, and especially through my classroom, love to return and marvel at how much taller than me they have grown. Trust me, this is not difficult. Our poor daughters have been shackled by the physical limitations placed on them by my vertically-challenged genes, just as I was held back by my own mother's limited height: she was all of five feet, one-and-a-half inches, and you had better believe that extra half inch was always important!

Even growing up, I had moments when the growth rates of my body did not follow any kind pf symmetrical plan. Aside from my cranium, which by all accounts has always been massive (the genetic gift of my father, the only size 8 fitted hat I have met in person), my limbs did not often cooperate: through high school, college, and into early "professional" life, one of my legs was at least half an inch shorter than the other, causing numerous back issues and the perpetual orthotic insertion of a foam pad my doctor and mother incessantly called a "shoe-cookie," for years, perhaps hastening its entrance into its subterranean landfill domain.

I would love to imagine that this asymmetrical growth does not extend to my hair but that would simply not be true. Last year, during the eight-month beard adventure, I struggled with the truth that the right side of my face grew hair quicker than the left side. I hoped it was simply a matter of accidental trimming while paring the facial garden but as you can see from the photo above (straight-on shot) that habit persists into the Year of the Goat. I am half-determined to leave it alone, combing it under to hide this strange growth-pattern, but why not be proud of it and leave it for all the world to see? After all, it was our Parent-Teacher Conferences this past week and they got to enjoy this phase of the growth, when no amount of manicure and mane-tending can tame the wild growth of the fourth month. Goat ON!

Mid-October

I am getting to this one a little late, but these pictures were actually taken close to mid-October. One must preserve the integrity of the goat journey after all. I am nearing the point at which I will have to shave, or at least thin the moustache portion of this evolving chin-creature. The razor hairs that spike down into my upper lip and grab at the food passing my lips into my mouth have never struck my fancy. Plus, if I were someone who is married to someone whose face was covered in upper-lip hair, this would be the part I would abhor most of all. You simply cannot avoid those gripper-hairs on the upper lip when your face is close to, or actually in contact with, someone else's face and that someone happens to have a moustache. Unless you are Tom Selleck and have the manliest 'stache going, or you lived n the time of Wyatt Earp, or you are Rollie Fingers or Goose Gossage and you just don't give a damn, you must think of your spouse. In case you are wondering, I have not been smooching any gentlemen callers and have never had the misfortune of rubbing noses with any mustachioed men, but I can imagine it would not feel nice, and I have to consider how my wife feels about the entire thing.

That is, after all, the question I have received most often over the past three years, from the themed-beards of Year One, through the massive facial mane of Year Two and now, in Year Three, the the ever-lengthening goat: "What does your wife think of that?" Anyone who has ever read this--so, all six of you--probably already knows the answer: she likes it. I am asked the question in equal proportion from men and ladies; the men always asking with forlorn admiration in the way that so many men think the wifely grass is greener on my side of the fence (hell, I think it is too, but, as my wife is spoken for BY ME, you gentlemen are out of luck!) The men are always amazed when I tell them she likes it, and they usually follow-up by informing me about the beard stranglehold their wives have on them...clean faces only!

The ladies who ask me reveal their feelings about the beard at the same time. Their question is slightly different: "How does you wife feel about your beard?" but their faces when they ask it tell the story well enough. Few have ever asked me without concurrently crinkling their noses or sneering slightly through pursed lips as though to affirm two things I could have already told them: (1) They think it is disgusting and they never would have allowed me to grow one in their house; (2) The reason I would never have been married any of them. Suffice it to say I am a very fortunate man, and not just because my wife does not mind my beard experimentation.