It wasn't too long after coming down with Covid I decided to go free for all rogue.
With my beard, that is. Yep ... shaving be damned.
Now here's the thing: Missy doesn't like me bearded. As a man of a certain age, it comes in way more gray than salt and pepper. She says it makes me look older.
But I don't care if it made me look older. I just wanted to have the beard again. Because I could.
So ... razors? Trimmers? Begone. I've no need for you for a few months while the growing commences.
Now, this time, as my beard got thicker and thicker, I saw a transformation in Missy. She didn't complain about it as she had in the past. "I hate that thing." "When is that coming off?" "You know it makes you look way older than you are." All were commonalities I heard daily, little asides I think she'd hoped would bury in a crook of my mind and nurture there into some form of common sense.
And yet she knows one of my superpowers is stubbornness, so I really didn't get the barely audible gripes and what purpose they were meant to serve.
Realizing her complaints were going in one ear and out the other, she formulated a new tactic. As things proceeded along, I was given an ultimatum. One where the beard would come to its end of days. I decided to prolong that date a bit longer and made a deal with Missy:
"Look ... even I get tired of it after a while. Tell you what: Give me until the end of April, one more month, and I promised it will be gone."
Missy countered something like this:
"Well, since you put it that way, I'll make you a deal. I'll give you the extra month ... but you have to Grecian Formula your beard at the end of the month so I can see what it looks like. Deal?"
We shook on it.
And then? The end of the month loomed.
As it happened, we were scheduled for an outing with The NorCal6 on the final weekend of April to the Sacramento Grilled Cheese Festival. (You can revisit that tale here.) So I told Missy I would Grecian up that Saturday morning before we left for the Fest.
Let's just say the results were, well ... interesting. Here's the beard before coloring ...
... and afterward ...
Just gotta say: I don't know whose idea it was to get BLACK Grecian Formula to wash into my beard ... but, well ... WowZah!
When Missy saw me I couldn't help but notice her mentally take a step backward. Admittedly, it is a bit shocking. "You know you weren't supposed to go so heavy on the stuff. You should have just sprinkled it in here and there so there was more of a salt and pepper effect ..."
"But it wasn't doing anything that way" I offered. "It just sat there like gunmetal grey goop, doing nothing. Besides ... I've never done this shit before so how was I supposed to know ... ?!?"
And, if you look closely (actually you don't have to look that closely) you can see where the dye leached onto my skin, around my mouth and outside my beardline ... SO THAT IT DYED MY SKIN ... !!!
Was this stuff gonna come off??!? Or had I inadvertently (possibly permanently) tattooed myself ... ?!???!!?
I immediately began scrubbing the areas. After applying more than just a bit of elbow grease (and about 25 minutes later), the majority of my dyed skin was free of blackface and, luckily, only slightly irritated and red from sandpapering the stuff off. *whew*
Missy convinced me to powder up my newly-colored facial hair with some grey-covering concoction to lighten up the garishness of it all and it seemed to do the trick. But I found out in short order the cover-up wasn't all it was cracked up to be; it seemed to be reacting with the dye itself and appeared to be melting off my beard! (It was simply the grey-covering goop sloughing off, not the dye itself.)
Well ... I was in for a penny, in for a pound at this point so, like it or not, it was onward to the Grilled Cheese Festival, newly colored facial monkey business in tow.
And while friends Grant and Peter chuckled at my new and comical appearance, it didn't look all that bad in the outdoors ... despite the fact I kinda sorta looked like a G.I.Joe Land Adventurer with Life-Like Hair & Beard ...
.......... Ruprecht ( STOP growing and dyeing your damned beard already )
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