Not every man can grow a beard, which is precisely why not every man should. You don’t ever want to be that guy who is very obviously trying to grow a beard that just isn’t there. Nobody likes that guy.
For most of my life, I put myself squarely in the category of “Men who should never try to grow a beard†and I was happy there. I shaved weekly and life carried on.
Then at the end of 2012 I decided to stop shaving two weeks before holidays began and just see what happened. Much to my surprise, 6 weeks later I was sporting a beard that made me look like a legit woodsman.
Problem was, it was starting to get a little wild and sticky-outy, so I tried to trim it down using these cheap clippers I have. Disaster ensued.
Here is a pic of that clearly shows that. I went to work like this for two days and even ventured out into public.
It was awesome.
I went back to being clean-shaven after that and put all aspirations of growing a badass soup-catcher aside until I was at least in my late-50s.
Problem was, I’d tasted the incredible, exhilarating power that comes with growing a beard. It’s hard to explain to someone who’s never grown one, but when you have a beard you feel like no one, no one, can fuck with you.
It’s like you’re reconnecting with your cave-dwelling forefathers, those hunter / gatherer motherfuckers who took no shit from no one and rarely lived past their mid-thirties.
They were the original rockstars of this world – dirty, hairy men who ran around in Mammoth-fur clothes, killing shit with sharpened sticks and dying in spectacularly stupid ways.
Once you know you have that power lying dormant within you, how the hell are you ever supposed to live a normal, beardless life ever again?
So naturally, when The Cub was born, I took it as an excuse to grow a “Dad Beard†and stopped shaving for three months. The growth I achieved in that time was phenomenal. Here is a pic of me looking back fondly on the times I shared with my beard on the day I decided to finally shave again.
Having already ticked the “Lord Fauntelroy†off my list of “Beards to grow one dayâ€, I decided to see whether or not I could rock a “Heisenbergâ€.
I’ll let the results speak for themselves.
I sorely regret I didn’t rock that one in public for at least another month. I mean Jesus. The respect I coulda gotten with that thing in a boardroom, I’d be closing deals quicker than you could say, “H-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-have an A1 day!â€
It was scaring The Cub though, so I decided to go full retard with a classic “Gay 70s Bikerâ€.
However! This next one I’m proud to say I DID wear in public for a good day or two… or one… yeah, it was probably just the one because J-Rab told me straight up, there would be no sex for me for as long as I looked like this:
After I shaved that epic snor and was finally clean shaven after 3 months of enviable growth, I looked at myself in the mirror and was pretty surprised to be happy to have my old face back.
It will be awhile before I grow my next beard and this time I’ll invest in proper clippers because without them you start to look like a full-on bergie (see above) which can work if, say, you play in a folk band or are a creative director at an ad agency, but for the rest of us regular humans it gets a bit siff.
So now that I’m done with what is by far one of the most self-indulgent posts I think I’ve ever written, I’ll let you go back to your life safe in the knowledge that you’ll sleep better tonight knowing what your Tiger pal looks like with facial hair.
The. End.
-ST
