62 lines
3.2 KiB
Plaintext
62 lines
3.2 KiB
Plaintext
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SAVING FACE
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By M.L. Verb
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In the agate footnotes of journalism textbooks it is written that before male
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newspaper columnists are allowed to retire they must write at least one beard
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column.
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I have no immediate intention of retiring, what with 20-plus years left on my
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mortgage, but this is one time I'm not waiting until deadline to meet my
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obligation. This is my beard column, which--if it imitates my beard--will be a
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sorry affair worthy only to be cut down in its infancy.
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Throughout our office one can find a dense growth of beards, ranging from the
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elegant to the poverty stricken, from the simply sad to the adamantly arrogant.
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And others always are struggling through birthing pains. Some men would look
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nude and emaciated without their beards. Others look ridiculous with them.
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I tend to look emaciated and ridiculous whether or not I shave. It's one of
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the reasons I had resisted the temptation to grow a beard for more than 40
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years (the first 17 years or so were the easiest). But recently--for reasons
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not clear to anyone, especially me--I was put under rather strong pressure to
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reform and hide my face under hair.
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Even my regular bus driver, himself the owner of a sporty new beard, has been
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after me to quit shaving. The final argument came in the person of my bald
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father-in-law, a conservative Republican who came to visit us recently and
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stepped off the plane wearing definitely, if indecisively, a beard.
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Weak willed and on vacation, I caved in. I put away my electric shaver on
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Christmas Eve, a Tuesday. By late Thursday it was evident even to casual
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observers that something organic was dancing on my face. By Friday the question
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of color had pretty well answered itself: It would be, like the hair on my
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head, salt-and-pepper, carrying countless small gray memorials to my mortality.
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Although several of the females who live in my house voiced favor for the newly
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emerging look of my face, the youngest one began to speak of me in the third
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person as him.'' I had started to change. I had begun to become my beard.
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Saturday provided more evidence of my inevitable demise. It was clear there
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would be not just a sprinkle here and there of gray but perhaps noticeable
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patches of white.
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On Sunday morning my face was resurrected. I allowed my photograph to be taken
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for the official family film record and then I retired to the upstairs bathroom
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to restore order to a face with which I had made my accommodation, a face that,
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however lacking in grace and craft, at least was not given to running amok with
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uncontrollable change.
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I cannot say much in favor of the hairless face I have grown over the years,
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except that it carries few surprises for me. In the long, slow years of
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usefulness and decline that it has entered it seemed unwarranted evidence of
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psychological disgust or at least uncertainly to make it dress up as someone
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else.
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And yet the experience has reassured me that if my face ever needs to be
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disciplined for, say, failing to pay attention to its job description, I have
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the power to transform it beyond recognition. And having now proved that to
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myself, it pleases me to remind my face of it in a gentle but firm way on
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occasional mornings.
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