My Beard is Cheap Acupuncture

Earlier this morning, I grabbed Analisse (2), aka, The Freak, up in my arms and began chewing on her cheek and kissing her nose.  I like to grow my beard for a week or two, then shave it off nice and clean and start the process all over again.  I began doing this when I grew my first whisker and determined to maintain the habit when I read a study that stated that people who don't shave their beards every day die earlier than those that do.

I think I need to inform Aunt Gertrude.  She has an epic 'stache that needs to be trimmed daily.  

Anyway, I'm determined to provide their control by bucking the trend.

In the meantime, I'm kissing Analisse and she's screaming and giggling while pushing me away with all her might.  I giggled right along with her and then put her down so she could run away from me.

A few minutes later, Jack (4) began to whimper about some Legos that fell apart.  I crawled over to him and assured him that Legos fall apart all the time because they want you to put them back together (I learned this in another study that measured the feelings of inanimate object like Legos and Nerf bullets, the latter being petrified every time they were loaded into a Nerf gun.  The trick is to spread superglue on the tip of the bullet to shield their sense of flying through the air.  Just watch the eyes when you shoot).  He took it like a champ, smiled, and began to clip those bricks back together.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught The Freak staring at me.  I looked her direction and noticed her cheek.  The one I had been chewing on and smooching.  It was covered in red dots that were spreading.  

Oops.  Guess it's time to shave.  Now I know why she was screaming and pushing me away.

My Dear Beard...Ok..My Patch of Scruff

An epic song came out in 2010, sung by Ke$ha.  The tune is catchy and it has my kids hopping around our van while we drive down two lane country roads in Wisconsin.  But that doesn't make the song.  Sure, it has a bunch of Gaga-esque randomness (even a squid for a split nanosecond that would make the single worthy of a "thumbs up" from P.Z. Myers) with a playful message about how love can mess with your head, rendering you idiotic while drunk on the elevated dopamine effect - a truism for a culture obsessed by the "meaning" of love.  That's all well and good.

What makes the song is the last four words, "I love your beard."  I have no idea why that works for me, but I enjoy random creativity out of left field, which is very much the reason why I skip past the country stations on my local radio dial.

Maybe I love the phrase because I have scruff on my face that I really like.

When I was a young boy, I was a late bloomer.  My brothers, at the age of 13, sprouted mustaches and had to begin shaving.  A year and a half later, I passed the age of 13 and watched my perfectly smooth upper lip turn more pinkish as the days went by.  I hit 14.  Then 15.  At 15, I had one hair on my lip and I left it.  It was the seed that would begin my efflorescence.

Someone told me that if I shaved once, my hair would grow back faster, thicker, and stronger.  So I shaved - four times a day.  I went to college and met a gentleman with a face that needed shaving five minutes after he touched a razor to it.  He was a fellow of European descent and yet looked downright Arabic.  I noticed he sipped coffee (black, mind you) all day, every day.  I began to drink coffee.  Lots of it.  Not your watered down horse pee you find in a church mega-pot.  Thick black coffee that ran like molasses.  If I could rub my teeth together after a sip without a squeak, I knew the coffee was too weak.  And so my hair grew.

My grooming habits became, well, habitual.  I would shave my face.  Then, three days later, my scruff was absolutely perfect.  The length of the scratchy stuff was downright sexy.  Then, after six days, my neck would begin to itch and I would start scratching.  On the seventh day, I would scratch my neck red, get sick of it, shave, and start the process all over again.  To this day, I still run this schedule, occasionally working in a goatee or a week-and-a-half beard.

Then I got married. 

I met her on the third day of my shaving cycle.  She swooned.  Then I kissed her.  She laughed and said I tickled her nose and that I scratched her.  I stepped back and she swooned again.  I wanted to kiss her, so I shaved and went back for a kiss.  She said I looked too young.

One day, I might try kissing her again.