Beards

I decided to grow a beard back in 1976. Jimmy Carter was inaugurated as president in January and I got a wild hair (pun intended) to see if it would grow. I figured I'd let it grow for a while then go clean cut again. It took no time for it to get full enough to have my mom and dad start badgering me about it each Sunday when we visited for dinner, but I paid them no attention. Seems they didn't want folks to think they had raised a hippy. By all the fuss they made, you'd think they thought I had decided to become a bank robber, ax murderer, or perhaps a republican.
As it turns out, here it is thirty years later and I have had some form of facial hair ever since. I'm not even sure what I would look like clean faced. I have old photographs of me without facial hair, but it doesn't look like me now.
That's probably why most people from high school and others from my past don't recognize me. If it were not for the fact that EVERYONE knows my wife, I could live in total anonymity. But when I'm with her they look at me and say "RICK?????" Yep, it's me I confess.
One of my mother's sisters loved my beard and one of them hated it. The one who hated the beard would give me a hard time every time we visited. She would look at me, scrunch up her face and say”I can't stand beards." I was tempted to break the news to her, that her beard was almost as full as mine, but in the end I decided against it.
I used to let my beard get long enough to braid, but these days I keep my beard clipped fashionable short.
So today when I encounter a young smart-elec whippersnapper I quickly put them in their place by saying "he bubba, my beard's older than you."