When Politicians Grow Beards - PART ONE

What Beards Say About Guys

In the mid-aughts, I was finishing up my first year as a high school teacher. It was a challenging year, as all first years tend to be in the public education field.

I was likely an incredibly shitty teacher in most respects. The students knew, and many took advantage of this, as they should.

Like most first-year teachers, it took me about twenty minutes to realize my educational training was utter bullshit. You’re making it up each day, and in my case, just trying to stay twenty pages ahead of whatever lackluster canonized novel I was attempting to teach.

Of course, classroom management—a topic that rarely came up in my university studies—is the most vital and challenging skill to master. You learn from your mistakes and defeats, then hopefully emerge as a hardened, proactive asshole.

Most of teaching is common sense, and I quickly learned that most kids appreciate authenticity above all else. So, I mixed a weird stew of laconic irreverence with erratic, passive-aggressive discipline.

In many cases, I agreed with the students that most school policies and procedures were at least somewhat misguided, if not altogether fucking dumb. (I’ll share my favorite story on this in the coming weeks.)

Anyway, I survived the year, but I was worn out, both physically and mentally. My heart was still in it, and I was determined to reflect and improve, which I did in the subsequent years.

But I most needed a chance to shut my brain off and get some sleep.

The last mandatory event on the school calendar was graduation, something I didn’t care about since I didn’t know any of the Seniors walking the stage. But I had to go, so I put on my stuffy gown and stood in front of my bathroom mirror.

I knew I was exhausted and didn’t feel great during the final days of school. I was also massively overweight, bordering on 260-plus pounds. I was hot and sweaty (I’m naturally a disgustingly sweaty person), but something didn’t feel right.

I could barely move and felt ready to pass out. My clothes were drenched underneath my robe, and that numbing sense of dread that emerges with real sickness was setting in.

So, I left a message (I figured out texting years later) with the coach masquerading as a principal (every big school has at least three) in charge of the ceremony and told him it was a no-go.

Two different urgent cares later, I took an ambulance ride to the hospital, spending a few days with a 104-degree fever. I went through the battery of tests, including a spinal tap (not as funny as the 1984 movie), before a healthy infusion of Vancomycin did the trick.

I never got any information on what caused the sickness (likely an intestinal disorder), but I was relieved not to be dead. I vowed to get healthy, eventually lost some weight, and devoted more of myself to better living.

Later, as a nurse, I realized that a LOT of people had it much worse than I did over those couple of weeks. However, events like extreme illness tend to change your attitude towards life.

Tempting death renewed me. Now, I mark the time as a turning point in my life—almost a rebirth if you will.

To honor my survival and renewed purpose, I did what any man would do.

I grew a beard.

Some twenty years later, I still have the beard. I’ve only shaved once during that time, something my wife reminds me never to do again. I’ve had a beard so long that a lot of people in my life don’t know me without it (my daughter, for one).

There’s a hard-to-define quality in the reasons guys decide to grow a beard. At some point in your life, every man gives it at least an attempt. Being able to grow a beard serves as a somewhat arbitrary measure of a weird, unattainable idea of rugged masculinity.

I.e., if you’re a guy, you remember the first guy your age that could grow a beard. (Jason Hayden in the fucking 7th grade).

Beards tend to mark time, almost defining different phases in your life. Fall to Winter, entering and exiting college, transitioning from married to divorced, or single to dating and back again, and suffering a mid-life crisis are a bounty of reasons to cast aside your razor.

There are two types of guys who sport beards.

The first tends to forget that they have a beard, while the second obsesses over how their beard looks. (I also just defined the stark difference between young and old, along with country folk and city dwellers.)

You can also make a case that the length and/or thickness of a beard marks a key distinction in lifestyle.

Most bearded guys I know in rural Kentucky just let it fly, sporting mountain goat beards descending to their chests or even further. (Here, “goat” is not related to “goatees”, which are just creepy.)

(Of course, the guy in the above photo is decidedly a mirror looker trying to convince you he’s a mountain man. The “Esquire photo credit” was a dead giveaway.)

Certainly, your stage of life determines beard length. When you hit middle age (or as I like to tell my daughter, my “early late prime”), you reach a certain, uber-satisfying level of “do not give a shit.”

If you’re old, married and/or your work doesn’t care about beards (or you don’t care if they care), then you tend to forget you have one.

Younger guys still on the prowl can’t afford such a luxury. Since these guys are naturally unsettled and still competing on the social ladder of rugged masculinity, appearances become everything.

This can lead to obsession, especially with those peculiar guys who devote time to looking at themselves in the mirror. That’s a whole other lifestyle where you’re obsessed with geometric symmetry and graphic design. Just having to use a second razor guard is annoying enough.

These are also the guys who frequent barbers, especially when they screw up trying to maintain their delicate decollete (I know this isn’t the correct word, but I’m using it anyway).

Of course, there is a fine line between neat and sloppy. Like just about everything else in my life, I don’t fit into one specific group. I don’t have a hillbilly mountain goat hanging on to my gut, but I also dislike using products like beard oil (similar to drenching your face in Crisco).

During the rare times I have to look presentable in a social setting, I get the trimmers out and try to finish as quickly as possible. It’s doubtful anyone would likely notice, except for some envious, unbearded youngster or an older guy who works out a lot and is about to buy a sports car.

Or a politician.

That’s a preview of PART TWO, where I dive into the narcissism and general hilarity that is political facial hair.