Mid-December

Lots of Goat-Haters out there....

I will be the first to admit that I appear to be incapable of growing facial hair at an even rate, whether throughout the beard or on certain sides of my face. Once again it seems as though the right side of my beard is growing at a more rapid rate than the left or center. Not only that, but the right side is growing in thicker...thus the natural sweep to the right you see in the photo above. Like the necessity for alignment of car tires that are suddenly pulling to one side or another it would seem that I need some creative trimming to even out this situation. That is counterproductive, not to mention against the spirit of this whole affair, so it is not happening!

Of course, many people like to point this out, more so the adults around my school than the kids, who have already begun to regret the challenge they posed to me a few short months ago. Now that the beard has entered its middle-ground shaggy phase, the kids have to deal with the untamed hairs reaching in every direction on any given day, and in no particularly predictable fashion. The adults in our school feel it necessary to comment on this, while the kids are giving me cringing looks that tell me I should shave...and do it SOON!

Meanwhile, on the home front, my older daughter enjoys keeping track of the growth and revels in running commentary about how this iteration of the beard/goat is coming in with a lot more white. She has taken to calling me Whitebeard from time to time. That is hardly necessary, though it is apparent that this girl has inherited her father's occasionally biting and always quick tongue. Our younger daughter just vacillates between her desire to see the "Big Beard" return and the need to see me clean shaven.

These are the grueling middle months of beard growth that no one glamorizes. They are the necessary meat in the sandwich of facial hair odysseys--some days you get bologna and others salami--you just have to power through and hope to shake the stink.