Mid-March

My daughter's pre-school had a Special Friends Day and, for some odd reason, they allowed a Goat to visit her for her third and final tour through the school (she's off the Kindergarten next year!)

How strange that a school would allow such a creature to enter their confines. What would have happened if this beast were to eat the books, or the numerous paper crafts and projects on display around the room? If you are unable to see the poor girl hiding beneath the flank of said Goat, you are not alone--she is easy to miss.

Not only did they allow this Goat into their midst, but they allowed it to play with other children, stage a read-aloud for all the Special Friends also in attendance that day, and even invited it back for a storytelling next month, on a Friday when he is not doing the daily tour of his own school.

As for my students, they are still in full denial that this could possibly be the same Goat they asked me to grow at the beginning of the year. So confused are they, in fact, that many of them have forgotten why the Goat is still a daily presence in their classroom, as they ask me a few times a week when I am going to shave. When I tell them, "After school is out," they just seem confused, the poor souls. Such is the efffect of the massive Goat, at times.

Here is another view of the Goat's visit to Special Friends Day. Look at the anguished look on the other girl's face, as she wonders how soon the Goat will depart. (Actually, she was laughing, and probably a bit uncomfortably because, what else can you do when something this ridiculous is attached to the chin of one of your friends/classmates?)

Beginning of March

The multi-colored Goat is in full effect now. The tangles and snarls result in numerous off-shoots from the main Goat-body, and it is these strays that catch the attention of many others, particularly those much shorter than me. And, since I spend much of my day around the ones in my class (at school) or in my family (at home) it is difficult to avoid the questions about the colors in my beard.

I managed to gross out the kids in my class this week as I referred to how my Goat was keeping me awake at night and, when they inquired as to how, I pulled the Goat up to my mouth and inserted a large mouthful of hair. This was true: the Goat at this length, just as its predecessor--the Beard--did, drifts upward toward (and into) my mouth each night as I attempt to sleep. One of the hazards of Goat-dom, to be sure, but nothing that cannot be overcome. For an extra-special view of the aforementioned facial-travesty, see below:

The entire things is pretty ridiculous, to be honest with you.

Mid-February

Loyal follower, we are now at the six month mark of the giant Goat and the taming of the beard has begun. What was a snaggly mess has begun to change its shape and feature from day to day, graduating from the in-between Mon-Chi-Chi of three weeks ago to the flowing tidal surge you see before you now.

We have moved on (somewhat) from straight-out Civil War reenactment to something that still needs daily tending. Though my hair is long, and destined to grow longer as we scrape funds close to our tax return, it still requires far less daily manicuring than my chin.

The tides may shift approximately every twelve hours but the Goat presents a Christmas morning surprise nearly every day. No matter the amount of combing, it still decides which way it will flow each morning and resists all attempts at shaping and guidance.

One morning it may be pulling to the right--a car badly in need of alignment--while the next it might curl up in a pseudo-nefarious motif. The Goat, apparently, is fully capable of making its own decisions. It's like I have an independent life form on my chin. The only time I feel slight harmony is during a run in the wind, when the Goat braces itself against the wind just as the rest of my body does. It screams out, "OK, you're leaving me hanging out here with no protection, so I'll curl up under your neck and help you for now, but only for now! When we get back home, we are back to our previous arrangement." Perhaps I should go running more often.

Here is close-up view:

Beginning of February

There are always times, in the beard's evolution, that things go a little haywire and the beard takes on its own personality and appears ready to make its own decisions. Whenever I shave my head (usually each summer) I often shave it several more times before allowing it to grow back in. This does not occur because I am afraid it will not grow back in, as one of my college roommates often claimed was his number one reason for not shaving his head, but because I have to commit to the Mon-Chi-Chi look at some point, and I am always reluctant to do that.

The Mon-Chi-Chi head occurs about two months after I finally commit to the full re-grow, and there is rarely anything I can do about it. It is the stage of hair growth during which my hair is too short to boss around, and I am unable to shove it into any position which I would like it to assume. But it is also too long to leave untouched: the true beauty of a shorn head. So, for those two or three weeks of in-between growth, I am stuck with the hair that resembles nothing other than those horrible pseudo-monkeys of mid-eighties toy fame; or fleeting fame, as it were: the Mon-Chi-Chi.

This is what the Goat has come to as well. A far cry from the resemblance to an early primate ancestor hairdo, the Goat at this stage shares one thing in common with that Mon-Chi-Chi look: it does whatever it wants, wearer be damned. Have a look for yourself below.














Note the left side of the Goat (on the right in your view of the photo.) That "wing" of hair has actually subsided over the past few days, transforming from its worst moments, as the mischievous curl of dastardly cartoon villains' moustaches to the flowing wing of facial hair it now resembles. This is usually the point during beard growth at which a student will ask me, "Why don't you just trim that thing?" When I confess that such a deed would defy the spirit of the pact we entered into all those months ago, I am usually met with an incredulous stare, followed by, "Well, then you could at least comb it!"

Little do they know how much time I have to spend each morning combing this beast, bringing tears to my eyes with every fifth stroke as it catches hair and plucks some wayward tangle from my chin. I have more respect for the ladies in my house each time I do this, as my hair does not tangle or snag very easily and I rarely suffer through the horrible rip-sessions that serve as their daily hair-combings. The small knot of chin hairs in the sink after each combing would probably worry me if they were from my head but, as this is a temporary commitment, it does not bother me in the slightest. Enjoy a second view below:

Mid-January

"Your beard is ridiculous!" That was what one of the women with whom I work said to me a few days ago; and so we open the season in which everyone feels free to comment on the growth of my facial hair. Bring it on!


What I have always found curious, in that suppressed-Sociologist kind of way, is how so many of these people are ones I rarely see and even more infrequently have the opportunity to talk to. People I barely know will from henceforth feel it is well-within their rights as beard-nation citizens to comment and question the look and flow of my beard.


At least that will happen if this goatee adventure follows the path of last year's ridiculous beard. In the second half of that beard's journey, random strangers approached me more often than known-ones (as opposed to loved-ones, who always felt free to offer more than two cents on the situation.) Don't get me wrong, I do not mind the comments at all. At least it gives people something else to discuss besides their jobs and the weather. As a champion of anti-small-talk, that is all I could ask for.


Here is another view:

Note the smooth flow off to the right-hand side, a la early-80s Christy McNichols' feathered hairdo. It's OK to be jealous. Maybe I'll get this thing permed....

Beginning of January

The beauty of living away from relatives is that they are never prepared for any changes in your physical appearance, particularly when those changes involve facial hair. So, while my brother shaved the mammoth beard he had grown for nearly 15 months, I emerged onto the family bearding scene with this hair-rag attached to my chin. Of course, it never fails that the beard is at its most ragged when you head home for some event.

My brother and I already have a tradition of arriving for Christmas with some kind of sculpted or manicured facial hair, the last two years of unkempt hair contagion notwithstanding. I made even sure I was otherwise well-shorn, practically burning my face with razor marks in the significantly-cooler and drier New Hampshire climes. Such are the sacrifices one makes in the name of superior beard-dom.

Now that we are nearly to the halfway point of this drooping chin travesty, I think it will be better to do bi-weekly updates. Not that it changes all that much within each month, but the longer it gets the more people feel compelled to comment, and I feel that has only just begun. So, let us all ring in the new year with a beard still in its adolescence!

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.