The Bearded Wonder... or Wondering Beard?

What is it with beards these days?

Duck Dynasty is a quirky and fun family show that gets a lot of mileage out of unkempt scraggly beards.  Jas, Willie, Phil, Si - the whole gang celebrate the beard reaching their chest as the ultimate sign of manliness.

The Boston Red Sox battling it out in the World Series with the St. Louis Cardinals seem to have one ugly beard after another in the line-up.

Maybe, I'm jealous.  I don't think I could grow an actual beard if I was stuck on an island without a razor for a full year.

Perhaps there would be some wisps and stray long hairs poking out from my chin and parts of the jawline... but it would no doubt be a patchy situation.

That's OK with me.  I think it's a whole lot less maintenance keeping my face clean than it would to sport a mustache, goatee, van dyke, or mountain man beard.  The thought of carrying parts of my meals around with me just isn't appealing.  And, if it's not appealing to me - I can't imagine anyone else finding it attractive either.

Those Duck Dynasty guys certainly married out of their league - so maybe there is some group of women out there that like scratchy soup strainers and food keepers.

More power to 'em... I can't do it.  It takes me a good 24 hours to get a five o'clock shadow.

However, it would be nice in moments of quite contemplation or when stumped by a particular question to be able to look thoughtfully into the distance and stroke my beard like I was in deep thought.

As a kid, when Dad and I would go on trips he would sometimes stop shaving during the trip, but when we headed home, off came the whiskers.

I didn't need to shave at all until college, and then it was a once a week scrape of the face.  For several years in my early twenties I could skip Saturdays without trouble, until it eventually was more painful to resume shaving on Sundays that I started into grabbing my Good News razor every morning.

Until I get so strapped for time I need to give up the two minutes it takes to do it - I'll stick with running the sharp blade to get cleaned up.

In the meantime, I'll stroke the short - short hairs on my chinny-chin-chin to think it over.