Thick?
Mm-hmm.
Bushy?
Oh, yes.
Awesome?
Oh GOD yes.
Until recently, even my neck-hair growth was a silky masterpiece of heaping hirsuteness, an unstoppable underbrush of unkemptness, a wonder of whiskered winsomeness...until I came to my senses and realized how sick neck-hair actually is.
All is not lost, however: as a result of my big ole bushy, fat beard, I can now say that I’m big-headed both figuratively and literally, and it reminds me of a story from my teen-aged years when, yes, I also had a beard...and, yes, I also obsessed over myself to a disgusting degree.
We were all coming back to school from a late-day basketball tournament - the team, the coach, and the coach’s wife, the latter we had never met before...and she, for some reason, seemed a little tipsy.
I was 18 with hair down past my shoulders, a sweet little goatee going on, and the pick-of-the-litter in terms of lockers: near the gym, near the exit, near home-economics (where, in the totally sexist year of 1994, all the girls took class), and near a water-fountain.
Mrs. Coach’s Wife was taking a drink from that fountain as I gathered up my belongings to go home; she turned and found me the only other person in the hallway; staggering just a little bit, she cozied up to me and started telling me about my facial-hair:
Mrs. Coach’s Wife:[giggling]
That...there, on your face.
[pointing VERY CLOSE to my face, a though amazed by my goatee]
With the hair all around that...your mouth...
[giggle; swirling finger in a circular motion]
It looks kind of like...
[whispers]
...an asshole.
Me:
Are you saying that my face looks like an asshole?
Mrs. Coach’s Wife:[giggle]
Suffice it to say, since none of my teammates witnessed it, none of them believed me...however, the next day my coach gave me an extremely uncharacteristic smile, and I knew that HE knew what was up, the proof being the absence of Mrs. Coach’s Wife at all subsequent basketball events.
Ah, to reminisce; these days, I don’t need a beard for someone to call me an asshole.
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