No Shave November

The baby face that I have sported for the past few months is about to be engulfed by a big, burly beard of manliness.

While I normally keep my facial hair to just a goatee, or occasionally shave it clean, November (and possibly into December or even January) comes the time when I grow it all out in support of testicular cancer awareness (or something like that). In all honesty, my beard isn’t really all that impressive. I grow facial hair ridiculously slow, so it takes a few weeks before anybody can even notice a difference. Day to day, that’s great because I can shave once or twice a week and never look all that scruffy. In November, though… Everybody else has a forest of beard while I still have what some would consider a five o’clock shadow.

Last year, I kept growing it out until soon after Christmas. My intent was to get picture proof of my 2-ish month old beard with all the Christmas photos. No Shave November because Don’t Shave December, but fell short of Just Don’t Shave January. Will I try it again this year? Maybe, but beards get awful scruffy. I could even make it to Forget Shaving February or Must Not Shave March. Ain’t Gonna Shave April starts to get a little warm, and May Not Shave May is when the weather just will not permit me to have a 6 month beard. Temperature and humidity just get way too high in the south.

We’ll see what happens. If I can ignore the scratchy feeling, beards are awful convenient come snowboarding season. I’ve had the outside collect frost, while my face is still warm underneath. The problem, besides being scratchy, is that beards also catch everything that comes within a few inches of them. Food, water, lint, and everything else begins to cling to me, and I have to keep a constant eye on it so that I’m not walking around with something unsightly in my majestic beard.