Changing Lanes: Follicle follies: adventures in growing facial hair

Many years ago, my father-in-law had a handlebar mustache, much like the ones you see on villains in old black and white movies. He grew it for a local sesquicentennial contest or some such thing. I think he won a mustache cup for his efforts. That is one item I could use these days.

He put some sort of goo in his mustache and twisted the ends of it to make it curl up and out. It looked like the horns on those Texas long-horned cattle and at the same time it gave him a subtly rough, distinguished look.

I have been growing a moustache and beard during the past few months. I didn’t do it on purpose. Emmy and I were on a trip and I bought a brand-new electric shaver. By the time I used it, we were many miles from where I purchased it. I am OK wearing earplugs while operating a chainsaw, but opposed to operating anything inside the camper, bedroom or bathroom that requires hearing protection. This thing is loud!

In my disappointment with the new shaver, I rebelled and quit shaving. Now I have longer whiskers than I ever wished for. I am beginning to realize the many drawbacks of facial hair. It is mildly annoying only when it isn’t very annoying. Often when I am asleep, some wayward whiskers will tickle my face and nose. My sleeping self forgets I have a beard and assumes there is a fly landing on my face. I pull up a blanket and my sleeping self thinks it is a rough, horsehair blanket.

I will probably have had enough of this soon and shave it off, particularly in the summer when the weather gets warm.

I tried to grow a beard years ago. I was young then and had no grey hair on top of my head, but when the beard grew in, it had grey and white patches. It looked raggedy. Now my hair is grey, the beard is mostly white and my mustache is uniformly brown.

There is so much I don’t know about facial hair cultivation. I liked the handlebar mustache Emmy’s father had and my inexperience told me I could easily grow one. There is more to it than I knew. Most of the hair never goes where I want it to; the whiskers wander where they will. I imagine someone who has had facial hair for years knows how to keep it out of their food. When I eat a jelly donut, it lasts a long time, especially the filling. Some of the jelly occupies the ‘stache until I can enjoy it hours afterward.

You just can’t pat your mustache lightly with a napkin to clean it. I have to rub vigorously and, if I really want it clean, I have to soap it up, wash and dry it.

I found out purely by accident, while eating a large piece of pizza, that I can put my entire mustache in my mouth at the same time. I have to be careful I don’t chew the ends off.

As we get older, I see that most of my friends’ hair has left the top of their heads. Their hair appears to have slid around to the bottom of their heads, in the form of grey beards and lip growth.

I bought some Clubman brand mustache wax for training my unruly facial hair. It might be the same goo Emmy’s father used on his mustache years ago. So far, my ‘stache refuses to learn any tricks at all. Trying to design something out of whiskers is like a long-term and difficult thruway construction project. I see it in progress for what seems like forever, but it doesn’t have any apparent outcome I can count on.

I’d like it if my mustache ended up well-educated and looking like the actor Sam Elliott’s. His facial hair and speech patterns kind of match: his sentences are slow and drop off at the ends with a drawl, just like the ends of his mustache.

Problem is, in the end, I will probably finish looking like Yosemite Sam, shooting pistols into thin air, tripping over a jelly-dripping mustache and shouting colorful cartoon profanities at Bugs Bunny.

Comments? Email Changinglanesterry@gmail.com.