My half-stached birthday

(764 words)

On the new driver’s license, the photo looks like a wooly caterpillar is marching up  my left nostril to lay eggs in a cozy cavity.

It’s just one caterpillar.

Yesterday had the happy coincidence of being both my 54th birthday and the forecast-ordained — three consecutive days of plus-50 degrees — annual beard-shaving day. 

So it combined to make it one of the busiest days I’ve had in nearly 25 years. How busy was it?

I barely made it to my bar stool by 3 p.m.

It wasn’t just any birthday either. It was the quadrennial one where the commonwealth’s Department of Motor Vehicles requires I show up and renew my photo ID.

For those who don’t care about bureaucracy, this is routine. For those prone to vanity about their appearance, it stirs anxiety. For me, it’s like opening night on Broadway for a one-man show that’s destined to run for four years.

It’s performance art.

It’s been that way for 30 years ever since a friend lectured me about how stupid it was to grin for the driver’s license photo.

“Man, the only people who are going to see that are cops and you won’t be smiling next time a cop asks to see it.”

This was a surprising blast of wisdom from a guy who’d spend the next eight years mopping the floors at an Orlando strip joint.

It was a revelation and for my next photo I looked like a guy who’d just emerged from a knife fight with a roving band of soccer hooligans.

Blood-shot eyes, scraggly hair, rat's nest beard — my look had real menace. If I was stopped by the police they would no doubt been dumbfounded at the disparity between me and my picture. Because the real me would be polite, smiling, a model citizen, one who’s vehicle just happened to be weaving past midnight.

In theory, he or she would say, “Sir, I suspect you’ve been drinking, but you’ve so clearly turned your life around since this picture was taken I’m going to give you a break. Be careful driving home and thank you for being such a role model to America’s youth.”

That whimsical scenario never played out. Not once.

But over the years I have shown that and similarly roguish pictures to countless tellers, clerks and bored TSA agents. The story would give them a chuckle, a little mental break from their often dreary duties.

It was them I had in mind last month when I hatched the idea to go half-stached.

I waited ’til the girls had gone and I shaved off all but the left side. It’s the side that’s defiantly dark. It’s very odd. My beard and the right side of my stash are salt ’n’ pepper, but the right side looks like it just jumped off Burt Reynold’s “Smokey & The Bandit” face and time-traveled four decades to land on my lip.

It’s very peculiar and I hope it grows back looking like it belongs on the same team as  the rest of my whiskers.

The guy who took the picture wasn’t phased a bit by my stunt. I admire that. He was very pleasant and chatty, but he wasn’t going to play along. I was a bit disappointed because I had rehearsed a response if he asked why I had only half my mustache.

“Well,” I’d planned to say, “sometimes I have a mustache and sometimes I don’t, so I thought I’d strive for an accurate depiction.”

Val and I met at the Sun Dawg Cafe in Greensburg. She noticed right away and burst out laughing in such a delightful way it made me glad I married a woman who appreciates surprise jolts of goofiness.

Lunch — it was wonderful — went without event until the owner came by at the end and said, “I have to ask: what’s with the ‘stache?”

I explained and she laughed and laughed.

Boy, does it feel good to make a friendly stranger laugh like that.

I spent the rest of the afternoon traipsing me and my half-stache around various bars and enjoying just a great birthday with so many friends.

Shaved the whole thing today. It’s the first time I’ve been wholly clean-shaven in 25 years. 

A buddy said I should keep it through the weekend to let more people see it.

I decline. Some stunts are better like shooting stars. Here and gone.

Besides, keeping it any longer would seem like I’m craving attention.

And I wouldn’t ever want what’s on my face to get in yours.

Related … 

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Increase facial, body hair to ward off winter

Lying about my height on my driver’s license

Lying about my height on my driver's license

(677 words)

My Pennsylvania driver’s license contains one bold-faced lie, a tall tale as it were. 

It says I’m 5-foot-10. I’d need to stand on my tippy toes to reach 5’10.

I’m more like 5’7.

Why I chose to tell such a petty bureaucratic lie, I do not recall.

Maybe I thought a cop would be less likely to tangle with a 5’10 dude. Or maybe I thought the deception would be useful if I was ever ambitious to commit a crime.

It would have been more artful fib if I tried to convince the DMV I was actually a female. It’s not likely they’d have been eager to interrupt their mundane routines by asking me to pull down my pants and prove it.

Maybe I used to think I was 5’10 because I had high hair. I used to have a nice, thick head of hair, a good two-inch cushion up top.

Now, sadly, it’s becoming sparse. Sensing what’s coming, I’m trying to sneak in as many bald jokes in as I can before I become one.

I got a good nasty one off on a bald buddy a couple of weeks ago. He was telling me how his 8-year-old daughter nearly fell off a swinging bridge in the woods and he reached out and grabbed her arm to save her from a trip to the ER.

“I felt just like Harrison Ford in ‘Indiana Jones,’” he said.

I told him it was more like No-Hair-ison Ford.

My 16-year-old daughter is almost as tall as I am and that feels wholly unnatural. I always told her if she ever got as tall as I, I’d immediately resume growing.

I’ve read the average American male is 5’10, so no matter how hard I try I’m destined to be below average.

I felt acutely short all last night when I spotted taller men contemplating using my bald spot for an ash tray.

It was the “Taste The Good Life” charity fundraiser at DiSalvo’s Station right here in Latrobe. It’s a very swanky affair at Latrobe’s finest restaurant.

I can’t afford it — I’m, er, short on cash — but my friend Tom often invites me when one of his more deserving guests bails.

Tom’s a true patron. He enjoys reading my blog, buys my books (for himself and as gifts), occasionally clicks the blog “donate” button and springs for my ticket at lavish cigar events.

If you think that kind of tangible support makes him my favorite reader, you’re wrong.

My very favorite reader is …

You!

I had a great time, but much of the night felt like the “Land of the Giants,” if only the giants were all puffing fine cigars and sipping high-end liquor.

The men all seemed huge.

I’m noticing a trend that those born after me are becoming taller, which also may be a consequence of me growing shorter. Long-time exposure to gravity and loss of bone mass means after the age of 30 we all begin to shrink. Most men shrink an inch; women, two.

But as our time on earth grows shorter, the people with whom we share it are growing taller. We’re evolving.

I read that during the Civil War, the average American soldier was just 5’6. 

Makes me feel like I could have singlehandedly beat the Rebs at Gettysburg.

So we as a people have added four inches in height in just 150 years.

What’ll it mean if the trend accelerates? What if we on average grow another four inches in, say, the next 12 months.

Of course, we’ll need bigger clothes, bigger vehicles and more food to fuel each generation of fresh behemoths.

The pessimists will say the growth will lead to — more irony — shortages and global upheaval will lead to our downfall.

I say nonsense.

The doomsayers fail to acknowledge the obvious.

The human race is finally growing up!

Too bad the only realm it’s happened to me is on my stupid driver’s license.

Related …

Your photo ID needs more menace

Me by the numbers