By Don Hall

First, it’s almost always a completely random impulse. It takes a while to grow a beard and now that I get that sexy salt & pepper thing going, it looks pretty solid. Despite me thinking I look like a “Sexy College Philosophy Prof” and my wife thinking I look like a “Pedophile Band Teacher,” I don’t think too much about the shearing of my face. I wake up, get the itch (so to speak) and just jump right in.

Second, I tend to combine the shave with a haircut. Yes, I hear the groans. And David jumping up and down like a loon screaming “Two BITS!”

In high school, all the coolest kids had facial hair: Wes Clemons with his bright red full beard, Todd Herman with his scruffy beatnik goatee, Ryan Blake with his once in awhile handlebar mustache that he’d then Fu Manchu it for a beat then Porn Star it until shaving it off completely and starting over again.

My hairmones had a hard time in those days, so the day in college when I could grow the full deal, grrrrrooooowwwww, I did. It made me feel different because people treated me differently. More adult, maybe. Some women found it sexier. Whatever it was, the beard made me look like someone else, like a costume piece, so I had permission to behave like someone else.

I make a joke that only I find funny that I’m like a low rent spy. Grow some facial hair, get a haircut, or shave, and no one recognizes me. I’m so much the prototypical white guy, average in almost every way, that I blend in to every locale. Which says more about the overwhelming prevalence of white guys than it does about my beard...

Whatever the reason, whether I’m growing or showing (giggle), the result is the same as when I decide to take a walk with my AirPods and listening to music that becomes my momentary soundtrack—different, which reminds me of who I am at my core.

How odd to change my costume to solidify who I am.