2009.01.06 A Lesson In Irritation

Back before S and I were even married, we talked about having children. Over the years of our courtship I found my own feelings shift from the initial "absolutely not; there's too many humans already", through "well, maybe we could do with more people like S", all the way to "I want to have a child with S". However, the inherent difficulty of having a child has never been far from my mind, primarily in terms of how irritating I fear it would be.

To emphasize to S that this irritation was not merely just a facet of my general irritation with humanity, and to playfully try to dampen S's own enthusiasm an iota, I issued a threat. The threat was that, if she were to get pregnant, I would grow a beard.

Perhaps I overestimated how much of a threat it would be, as I based it on how much S protests when I'm not clean-shaven. Or, more likely, I underestimated other factors. Needless to say, circumstances arose to activate the threat, and I commenced to grow the beard. At first, nobody noticed. I do tend to be a bit lax about shaving normally. After a month, people seemed to react positively to the beard. Not just stray comments, but people actually started to seem much more deferential. Almost like there was some subconscious or instinctive reaction that asserted to them that, this, then, was clearly an alpha male - a being to take seriously. More seriously, at any rate.

Certain aspects of the beard were amusing to S. Finally I was able to demonstrate that my facial hair really was quite different from my cranial hair - redder, with actual blond bits by the lower corners of the mouth, and very coarse. Overall, though, she hated it. Especially the disturbing way it could be made to stand on end and act like super abrasive velcro.

This was of little satisfaction to me. Because even if it was mildly irritating for S to look at while we were together, and occasionally scratchy to be in contact with, I had to suffer with the damn thing constantly while she was quite content with just ignoring me. The infamous itchy phase was unpleasant, but gone after 5 weeks. Worse was how, once the beard was long enough, its twisty fibers would burrow into the pillow. If not for the painful tugging sensation, my beard would surely have suffocated me on several occasions. Food became an ongoing adventure, always wondering but never knowing how much disgusting stray sauce and bits would be waving around on my whiskers. At the same time I was growing out my hair, because I thought it would be silly to be bald with a beard, and I really, really hate my hair. Even the non-wispy thick hair; it's rebellious and uncooperative.

In short, I HATED IT.

I tried just shaving my head, to relieve that much irritation at least, but it made me look freakish. Members of Al Qeada would have reported me to the authorities as a suspicious-looking person. So now it's gone.

But not forgotten.