Facial Hair: Blessings and Curses

Most of us men deal with hair follicles of the facial region every day. It's a choice to shave or not, how to shave it, where and when to do it. Or not. Some people around us, both those who see us and those that we have close contact with, deal with the facial hair, too.

I started shaving a little bit in high school, but not a lot. I wanted to shave off some peach fuzz off my lip the night before an eighth grade dance near the end of the year when I was 14, but my dad flatly refused. I went a while longer with the fuzzy upper lip.

I was shaving in earnest by the time I was 19, on my full time mission starting in Provo, Utah, and then on to Chile, South America. I honestly cannot recall how much shaving I did from ages 15-18, but I think that I could borrow my dad's electric razor and avoid the straight edged blades most of the time.

I used the razor blades for two months in Utah, most days as the mission requires, like Bic or Gillettes (as Chileans refer to them), but then in the city of Los Angeles of Chile (the zone headquarters of my first area) I purchased a nice, expensive, life time guaranteed electric shaver. It was... a General Electric one, I think? I lost it in 1999, in Cleveland, Ohio, to my chagrin. I meant to try out the life time guarantee with it, but a guy who I tried to pay to return it, sending it by mail across the country, prevented me from finding out. Oh well.

By the time I was living in California in 1999 I guess I had a new electric razor, but I also used the edged blades. Some times I would grow out my facial hair in the 1990s, as a full fledged adult I had various reasons to shave the hairs of my mustache or chin or cheeks. I experimented with all types of facial hair, including my longest beard time in Provo in 1996. I sometimes had a goatee, sometimes I went with longer "pork chops", or side burns. I experimented with my facial hair enough in 1997 that my boss in Sandy, Utah, would call me "the man of a thousand faces", or something like that. Bob Caldwell was around 30 years old and almost always clean shaven; I was 26 and couldn't get it all together. I was in a play previous to that where the director (female) had me keep a thin Clark Gable mustache for the part. We did 19 shows over two months or so.

Over the years and all this time, I have found there are five times to be clean shaven. Maybe seven.

1. Serving as a full time missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

2. Attending Brigham Young University as a student. ( I also worked nights for half a year at the above-mentioned Missionary Training Center, where it was paramount to be clean shaven.)

3. Having a priesthood office within the Church, like in my case Branch President, or perhaps a temple worker, which I have not done but has become a requirement.

4. Showing up as an extra for a television show or movie.

5. Serving in the U.S. military.

6. Trying to impress others of all sexes, to appear more clean cut and professional.

7. Trying to be smooth and attractive for that special someone of the opposite sex.

Then, the combinations of facial hairs and styles may add or subtract from the above clean shave look, including for professional reasons to include television and film, and even military and professional reasons.

I was going to write a bit more about the whole subject, of this way, and this style, and this blade and even plucking, but this suffices for now.

I don't wish to bore you that much.