"No, you're not!" said Little Nicole

I'm not the biggest fan of shaving that's ever lived. I do it, at least on workdays, because the alternative, not shaving makes me even uglier and older looking which is quite a feat, come to think of it. Shaving is like getting a haircut or mowing the lawn or washing the car. No matter how well done (and I've never been accused of giving myself a good shave) you have to do it again. With haircuts, I've actually kept track of the number of haircuts I've gotten since leaving the Air Force on 23 September 1983; it comes to seventy-nine haircuts. Why would I track this number? Because I hate getting them even though I look like some kind of a crazy when I don't get them. I already have the wide eyes and the herky-jerky movement-the last thing I need to look like first runner up in the St Vitus lookalike contest is a bushel basket of hair growing all over the place.

Okay, not exactly all over the place-I have a bald spot on the top of my head, probably visible from space at this point in my life. I still think what's happened is, as I've aged, I've learned more and my brain has gotten bigger to store all this knowledge and my head, to keep from crushing my bigger brain has also gotten larger. The problem, as I'm sure you can see (and possibly suffer from as well) is that I only have a finite amount of hair and scalp to cover my head. As it gets larger, they get thinner. So it's not so much I'm going bald as I'm getting smarter. I hope.

Perhaps that's why I attempt the beard so often: to grow on the bottom of my head that which doesn't any longer on the top? To make matters worse, or at least more humorous, if I don't shave, the growth on my face is very grey. I mean really grey-like skid-row grey; as in 'Buddy, can you spare me a dime?' grey. So grey that two weeks ago while I wasn't shaving (and lying to myself that 'it looks pretty decent this time'; it didn't) I got a senior citizen's discount on breakfast at a fast food place I've gone to for years. As much as I enjoyed saving money, my feelings were a bit bruised. I, however, did not return to the counter and give the senior discount back to the clerk. Mom raised crazy children, not stupid ones.

I'm not sure why I dislike shaving-it's not just the monotony or the monopolization of time (I have never been able to figure out how to do anything else while shaving) or that I cut myself like I'm auditioning to be Johnny Depp's understudy in whatever that movie was. I even managed to cut myself with an electric razor and still the Guinness Book people won't return my calls, even though now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.

I buy the latest razors, the fanciest blades and have taken (and passed) the on-line and correspondence courses on how to use all of them. I own an amazing assortment of gels, creams and foams (somewhere I may still have a mug and a brush which is how my dad taught me to shave, I think, because that's how his dad taught him to shave. Patrick, my son, and I share no such moment), after shaves and skin toners and those damn styptic pencils.
I hate those things most of all. The only good thing about them is I don't have to walk around for three hours in the morning with little dots of toilet paper that I used to stanch the bleeding on my neck and chin while everyone I talk to pretends to NOT see the toilet paper and then they walk away thinking, 'what a doofus! Can't even shave himself!' Yes I can! Just not very well. Besides, someone has to be the bad example and styptic pencil manufacturers gotta eat too.

Elementary penguin, singing Hare Krishna. Man, you should've seen them kicking Edgar Allen Poe.
-bill kenny