by John McLoone

Some clean living

I’m officially on day nine. Every morning, I look in the mirror and congratulate myself on taking this bold step one more day.

I can’t think of an extended period of time since I was a teenager that I have strung together nine straight days of this. Yes, folks, you guessed it: I’m clean shaven.

I was young when hair started popping up on my face. In seventh grade, I got a shaving kit for my birthday. I’ve battled the blade since then, but I gave in to facial hair after high school. With the exception of shaving it all off once or twice, I’ve had a beard and/or mustache since that time.

I probably would have in high school, except that at one of our rival schools, every high school kid had a cheesy mustache. The last thing I wanted was for someone to think I was from Pewaukee, so every other day I would scrape my face. I also didn’t want to be told by my father that I looked like some kind of a “hippie.” We had just a few rules, but one was that hair had to be cut. Not wanting undue attention, I followed that rule.

Then came college. I can honestly say I didn’t shave my entire first semester. I went to school a clean cut kid from the suburbs and came home for Thanksgiving looking like Grizzly Adams’ evil twin. I wish I had pictures from back then. There was no grooming to this mess on my face.

Over the years, lots of things changed, but one thing stayed the same. I tried just having the mustache, but that always seemed kind of cheesy to me. Burt Reynolds and Tom Selleck could pull it off, but not me. I never got that full thing that has an actual presence on the face. Mine fell far short. I looked like I should be wearing a polyester leisure suit and selling aluminum siding door-todoor. I even tried a fu-manchu mustache once. I didn’t quite give off the Harley riding tough guy persona I was trying for, though. At the time, it just didn’t work on a guy who had to wear a suit and tie to the office everyday.

For the past several decades, I’ve alternated between a full beard and one of those just mustache and chin ones. I never did any goofy designs like you see other guys trying. I never had a beard looking for more work grooming. It was always strictly for less work.

I hate to shave. I skipped one day this weekend, so I’ve now shaved eight of the last nine days. That’s more, I would guess, than I have shaved in the last 20 years.

So far, reactions have been mixed. My wife noticed after four days. One person told me I looked dumb, but then told me I looked dumb before too. Someone else (a woman even!) told me I look a lot younger. I’ll give it a try for a while and see how it goes. I’m not quite ready to attend Shavers Anonymous, but I’m going to do my best on my own.