I failed. I tried to make the transition from goatee guy to beard guy and failed. It's not a challenge to be accepted lightly. I stayed on target for almost a month; the crucial ammount of time it takes for a beard to go from scraggly to luxuriously full. I was just on the edge of complete beard success, when I realized that becoming a beard guy involves much more than growing facial hair.

Guys with beards are generally more happy and more cuddly than goatee guys...like big teddy bears. (It's a commonly held myth that beards are scratchy. Once past the itchy stage a beard is pretty soft.) Santa Claus is the archetypical beard guy. Goatee guys generally aren't boisterously happy. They're shifty and have something to hide. Movie villains have goatees. The Devil has a goatee. You can see why I wanted to make the change.

It's not that I'm shifty, have anything to hide, am a villain, or an evil-doer, it's simply that I couldn't make the move to jolly. I'd like to be jolly. I think we all would. But it's just not me. And I couldn't wear the beard knowing that inside I didn't meet all of the criteria for being bearded. (Plus, skp had taken to calling me beardo around the house...which got old.)

So in that sense, I failed. But as I stood over the sink full of freshly shaved facial hair this morning I wasn't too sad. I knew I made the right decision.

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Comments

Yippee! No more beardo!
by skp on Feb 8th, 2002 at 1:24 pm
Well, anything that gives us more pb face and preserves his need for mystique is a good thing.

p.s. I'm now living an hour closer to you. Huzzah!
by Dinah on Feb 8th, 2002 at 3:16 pm
I've always found you jolly, pb. A quiet jolly, but jolly nonetheless.
by dmp on Feb 8th, 2002 at 5:01 pm
aw, I thought you had that "non-taxpaying luddite who is stockpiling alarming amounts of firearms up in the hills" look down pat. Oh well, horray that evil pb is back!
by mathowie on Feb 9th, 2002 at 12:05 am
I've made the unfortunate goatee-to-beard transition myself several times, peebee, and let me tell you: It's a world best left unexplored.

For what it' worth, I think the goat favors culture jamming, where the beard is more likely to say, "dropped out of society".
by Anil on Feb 10th, 2002 at 12:13 pm
I guess even the beardo archetype Santa is a society drop out. He lives most of the year at the North Pole and only shows up at the end of December. No wonder he can maintain jolly.
by pb on Feb 10th, 2002 at 4:26 pm
welcome back to goat land...
by eric on Feb 11th, 2002 at 6:31 pm
I can't even grow a real goatee. Just that chin thing. It's not fair, my dad forgets to shave one day and he looks like Grizzly Adams. I forget to shave for a whole week and someone says, "Your lip looks dirty."
by andre on Feb 14th, 2002 at 1:47 pm
Wasn't it Walt Whitman who had the beard, loved kids in public, but was a wacko in private life? Even if that's talkin' insanity, the premise is the same. You can be Santa if you want, but the true wierdoes wear the beard, look happy, and are cynical, crazied to the core beings inside.

Or at least they're too lazy to shave.
by R on Feb 20th, 2002 at 7:31 am
Hi! You're reading a single post on a weblog by Paul Bausch where I share recommended links, my photos, and occasional thoughts.
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