Plucking Out My Moustache a Hair At a Time

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I remember when I was fourteen, I had my first moustache. It was sparse, but with thick hairs, like a giant novelty comb you would get at a carnival. My mother thought it was cute, but I thought it was trashy, so I decided to shave it off. Only, I had never shaved before, so I went horizontally across my lip instead of vertically. Not only did I not actually shave any hairs, I managed to slice my lip open pretty severely. Blood poured down my lip and into my mouth, onto the counter and into the sink.

I got the hang of shaving eventually, but decided that it just wasn't worth the hassle. I would grow a full beard if I could, but I wasn't quite blessed with the facial hair growing prowess of some, so I just keep a sort of bandito look, a chin beard and a moustache that aren't connected. I have kept that look for almost a decade at this point, only changing it for one ill fated fortnight where I shaved my moustache and looked very much like Maynard G. Krebs.

Having this hair on my face has spurned a new and unfortunate nervous trait. I seem to be plucking my moustache hairs out one at a time at random moments throughout the day. I'm not sure if it's stress or boredom that has brought on this new habit, but it has produced a weird bald spot the on left side of my lip and left it red and irritated.

I feel like I should just shave it off, just so I won't do it anymore, but I think I would look weird at this point without facial hair, and my wife probably wouldn't like me anymore. Also, I kind of fear that I may just start plucking my hair out, which was a trait I had in eight grade, or rather Ryan Nady had for my head (I would fall asleep during movies in classes and he would pull out my split ends and any stray hairs, which for me was a lot). Either way I need to break this habit, or I will soon probably irritate my lip enough that the old scar from my first shaving attempt will just burst open and blood will pour everywhere again. Or, if nothing else, I will just look like I have some sort of weird lip mange. Either way, it won't be healthy.

I'm Not Much of a Preacher

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My grandfather passed away a couple of weeks ago. He was a life long smoker who refused to give it up even right to the end. Even after they told him it would help his chances of living, he still refused to give them up. We were told that he probably only had a year or two left, but then a couple of weeks later, he just stopped living. They say it might have been a stroke, but no one is really all that sure. I think because of the shape he was in, we were all expecting the phone call at any moment. When I first heard the news, it was upsetting, but not life altering, it wasn't unexpected and we weren't all that close, but it was still a bit of a cold slap to the mouth.

While I sat in the funeral home and listened to the Johnny Cash song my father picked to play, I kept looking around the room. Sad faces, but nothing crushing. I thought about my father and how with each passing year, he looks more and more like his father, and with each passing year and each passing cigarette, he is closer and closer to having the same thing happen to him. The preacher spoke and opened up his salvo with today's GoogleTube, and then proceeded to live up to that with each word he spoke. After, he was done talking though, I immediately thought of myself, which I guess (or at least to ease my mind of being too self absorbed) everyone tends to do at these kind of things.

I promise, I didn't want this to be one of those "I have to deal with my own mortality because of the mortality of others" things, but it really my own mortality was the first thing I thought of. I wondered if I died tomorrow, what would people think about my life. I think at this point, people would talk about how young I was, and how I left a young wife behind and how I had so much more to accomplish. But I'm starting to fear that even if I die at 38 or 48 or 98, people are still going to talk about how I had so much more to accomplish. I have been dogged by the word potential since I was a kid in the talented and gifted program at my elementary school, and now I'm starting to wonder if I will die with all that unfulfilled. I think that's the problem with people having high expectations of you, is that they expect you to do things, and even when you don't do the things they expect, they still just keep expecting. Almost makes you want to take up smoking.