Pack-rattery Saves Beard, Day; Ruins Apartment
Posts on my hair issues seem to generate more discussion here than anything else, so feast on my latest hairy adventure:
While the scalp hair looks and feels great long, the facial hair tends to do the rabbi thing when left to its own devices. Untended since November, the beard had developed that first kink and now threatened to steal the little beard comb and hide it in a dark place lost to this world, so I decided to dust off the old cordless trimmer today and try to tame the beast.
With a ridiculous amount of time and effort, I managed to back the right side off to my liking. As I approached the halfway point, the trimmer sounded run-down and I grew concerned; "Perhaps I should stop here, while I at least look like I might have meant to do it," I thought, but then I remembered the days before the Lawnmower Incident of 1996*, when I still mowed the parents' lawn; I could actually hear and feel the change from happy grass to crabgrass as the mower slowed upon its entry into the thick mats of the nasty stuff, and I decided that the super-gnarly stuff just under my jaw had perhaps affected my trimmer in the same way. I decided to press on.
But the beard had in fact bested the trimmer, and not without leaving me looking like a complete asshole. The left-side, neck-and-chin beard remained untrimmed, but a smooth enough transition between trimmed and untrimmed made it look as much like a goiter under a normal beard as a botched trim. I had hoped to shower afterwards and make the most of a pleasant-enough afternoon, but even a nut like me wouldn't go out looking like such a tool. I tried to remember what I'd done in similar situations; when the trimmer had wound down just before applying finishing touches in the past, I simply recharged it for a few minutes and managed to get it done. So, I put it back in the charger, cleaned the sink and toilet, and went back to work. I got about ten seconds out of it. I scrubbed the shower. I got nine seconds. I vacuumed what parts of the shitty apartment remained free of encroaching clutter. I got eight seconds. It became clear that after almost a decade of faithful service, the trimmer had nothing left to give, my sorry state notwithstanding.
The Wife perused Target's selection of trimmers online, preparing to make an emergency run. The Boy giggled at my third of a burly beard. I started to panic.
Then, the Wife remembered that we'd kept the corded clipping shears which maintained my sweet '90s "undercut" and last saw action exactly eight years ago, when the doomed 'do met its inevitable fate after years of evening up the sides with a little more clipping here, then there. These shears had since moved with us four times, and lay in the back of the car, probably as a result of an aborted attempt to donate them somewhere other than a landfill (this good intention, combined with my laziness, has resulted in an accumulation of a number of once-useful things we no longer want, can't just throw away, but never get around to donating - it doesn't help that charity thrift stores in California have gotten so picky!). I plugged them in. I clipped away. I looked good. I felt relieved, as though I'd shorn off the shittiness of the Wisconsin Death Trip; long-lost energy returned, and my mood mellowed.
For a brief moment, I also felt a touch of "I told you so" toward the Wife, who often laments my pack-rattery - it had saved the day, and the beard! But as I jumped out of the bathroom to throw it in her face, the cost of a good beard proved too high: old television on the floor by the computer; new mattress and box spring occupying the entirety of the second bedroom, awaiting their use since Thanksgiving; shelf stereo sitting by the front door, also since Thanksgiving, awaiting its rightful place in the entertainment center pending a cleaning; mounting mounds of textbooks and notebooks; ancient documents crowding any available flat surface (not all my fault). While it saved the day this time, the clipping shears wouldn't work on my moustache or any finer points of beard trimming in the future. I had to swallow my "I told you so;" the apartment looks like shit because of pack-rattery.
I'd like to have learned a lesson, but I think all I've only learned that I'd love for all of you to pay a visit, admire the finely-groomed facial hair, and take a TV, stereo, or textbook. I don't like a botched beard, I don't like living in a rat's nest, but I simply can't stand to take this shit away myself.
* For those of you who haven't heard the horror of the "Lawnmower Incident of 1996," a summary:
As I pulled a pushmower through the crabgrass (never do it; we call it a pushmower for a good reason), my mother had moved some ramp-structure-piece-of-shit-things into the corner of the lawn; I tripped over them, falling backwards, my left foot going under the mower. Fortunately for me, I did a pretty intelligent job of it: I wore shoes, used the mower with the safety feature I hated (it shut off when I let go of the handle, so I had to re-start it every time I moved a stick or shooed a frog; the sweet mower, which ran indefinitely and required hotwiring with a screwdriver to start, didn't work at the time), and had Ma right there at the clothesline to drive me 20 miles to the nearest emergency room. I had broken my big toe twice and chipped a piece of bone from the next toe over, but all toes remained on the foot; the sweet mower would have taken my foot clean off. While my big toe still has a jaggy scar and a distinct bend, everything still works down there.
I haven't mowed a lawn since, nor will I ever do so again. May the prairie reclaim that cursed property, and fakehell take those fucking lawnmowers.