Growing a Beard

I’ve only been living with a beard since August 2007. Before this date I’d toyed with the idea of growing facial hair, but just the wispy stubble that so many pop stars try to carry off. I had six weeks of holiday coming, I’m a primary school teacher, and it was now or never. I was going to look like a lumberjack.

Early doors

As I said, I have tried growing a beard before, but after a week the in-growing hairs would swell up and I’d itch like a stray dog. My brother gave me some good advice, he told me to brush the skin with a firm brush every day and moisturize. Well, so much for the rugged woodcutter image!

Look, don’t touch

The next three weeks were spent driving around Wales with my partner, son and two neurotic dogs. Our old VW camper just helped with the hippy lumberjack look. The beard was growing slowly, and I was following the four week rule of not trying to trim or tidy. I was beginning to look like a homeless guy and I was enjoying the way people were reacting to me. Being a primary school teacher, I’m used to people coming up and talking to me and generally feeling at ease in my company. I noticed that people weren’t bumping into me on the foot path; in fact they were giving me a wide berth. I’d like to think that this was some sort of respect for my manly, macho appearance; it’s most likely that they thought I was a slightly disturbed resident of the local psychiatric ward.

Time to trim

On returning home from the road trip, I was greeted with gasps from the neighbors and wasn’t greeted at all by the cat. I left the beard growing for another week before nervously asking my partner to apply the trimmer. If you are thinking of growing a beard, you must buy a trimmer, they’re not expensive. I trimmed around the neck line to give some definition, but only went about 1cm in. I tidied up my cheeks by shaving the stray hairs. I’d already decided that I was going for the full beard rather than one of the more phony looking styles.

Come up and see me

I found lots of help on a popular beards website, do a search, you’ll find several. This site had hints on beard care and style along with a rather disturbing picture gallery. Most of the photos fell into one of two categories. Half looked like gangster mug-shots, I’d give these men a very wide berth on the foot path; the other half were shirt off, winking at the camera, soft focus style shots; very homoerotic and definitely not the look I was going for.

Back to school

When I returned to school I had the usual puns. Did you put your head on upside down this morning? The general consensus was that it looked ok. I was damned with faint praise. It was the children’s response that I’ve found the most interesting. At first there was a lot of muttering when I’d walk down the corridors, but they were soon coming up and joking that they didn’t know who I was. Mothers seem to be more keen to spend time talking to me after school, but Dads (beardless) seem to be less keen – maybe they think I’m going to take my shirt off and wink at them.

Two months in

Today I’ve had another trim, this time taking some length off the cheeks and under the chin. The hair under my chin is insect like; do you remember the hairs that started growing on Jeff Goldblum’s back in The Fly? It’s looking a lot better now that it’s trimmed. I’ve left the hair long around the goatee area and I’m still hoping to grow my moustache long enough so that I can wax it for my best friend’s wedding next year. Maybe I’ll post some pictures onto one of the beard websites. Only one thing to decide now, do I go for gangster chic or hello boys?