Yesterday evening, with my brother in town for one final night, I signed us both up last-minute for a wine tasting class at the Institute of Culinary Education. Getting ready to head out the door to the class, I grabbed my trusty beard trimmer from the bathroom cabinet for a bi-weekly touch up. Passing the trimmer over my chin, I seemed to be shearing off more than usual. “Odd,” I thought. “Perhaps my beard grows faster in the spring.” Looking at the trimmer more closely, however, I realized the longer cuttings weren’t a result of speedy growth; instead, the trimmer was apparently set at the very closest setting.

“Oh,” said my brother from the other room at the sound of the trimmer. “I was playing with that this morning. You might want to adjust it back to the normal setting before you use it.” A little late for that. I now had a mangy looking beardless patch below the left side of my mouth.

“It probably isn’t even noticeable,” my brother said from down the hallway, before turning into the bathroom, getting a closer look, and dissolving into hysterical laughter on the floor. Apparently 95% of a beard doesn’t quite cut it. So, already slightly late to leave for the wine tasting, I quickly checked the trimmer was still on setting one (a.k.a. ‘fragrance model perpetual five-o’clock shadow’), and sheared away.

As a result, I’m back to beardless. Or, at least, nearly so. And while I’m almost certainly growing it back, I can’t say I entirely minded the chance to compare, in close succession, the bearded versus unbearded versions of my face. Change can be good. Albeit, occasionally, rather unexpected.