A close shave: Two pandemic-inspired projects.
Closeness or Comfort? Old age makes this an easy decision. Photo by Supply on Unsplash.
The pandemic of 2020 was the last straw. It pushed me to do two things I have resisted doing. The first is to buy an electric shaver because I am giving up closeness for convenience. I could have given up and grown a beard (I still might). The second is to start this blog I call the Mossbunker Review.
When I was a young man, there were many things about my father and other older men that puzzled me. I found the solution to one of the greatest of those mysteries when I began to have wrinkles of my own. It is nothing profound. It has to do with why so many older men who are otherwise Luddites use Remingtons and Norelcos.
My father taught me how to shave using a double-edged safety razor (DESR). While one can still buy these steel instruments on Amazon, they look barbarous (no pun intended). They are no match for the sleek plastic razors now supplied by Harry’s or Gillette. The DESR made close shaving possible without a barber by encasing a disposable blade with two thin, sharp sides. The metal case protected the skin from all but the very edge. Armed with my DESR, a styptic pencil (for cuts), and a roll of toilet paper (also for wounds), my late adolescent years became easier. My post-shave face was soft as a baby’s bottom. Except for the cuts. But my father was not doing as he taught me. He was massaging his face with floating rotary heads. And while he shed less blood than me, his face was more like 0000 sandpaper than an infant’s bum. I began to think he was a wimp. No pain, no gain.
But I was wrong. I discovered my mistake when I passed fifty and began to get wrinkles and things like skin tags. I was never warned about the latter. I wielded my safety razor as one with five decades of experience, but my skill could not match the hazards of old age. Repeated strokes would not remove the growth from the corners of my mouth and the soul patch area under my lip. The little blond soldiers would not go down regardless of how hard I pressed. The area on my upper lip right against my nose was utterly unreachable. Even fresh razors ripped open the raised parts of my skin--without cutting the stubble.
No wonder my father, grandfather, uncles, and father-in-law all graduated to Norelco. I have fought a good fight, but now I am turning on the electricity. What’s that got to do with the decision to begin this blog? Not much. I have stories I have to tell. Being a perfectionist, I put off sharing them till I could make the telling soft as a baby’s bottom. But there were cuts and blood along the way. And other things to do. I read books about writing to avoid telling them, and I wrote pieces to please other people for the same reason. I also designed other websites and wrote half a dozen other sporadic weblogs.
So I am making a new beginning, again. I am turning on the electricity, and I hope the outcome will be as sharp as it once was. Thank you for witnessing my journey.
