My New Look Is Just Making My Wife Bristle. Gregory Freeman, P-D 9/29/1995

Headline: MY NEW LOOK IS JUST MAKING MY WIFE BRISTLE
Reporter: By Gregory Freeman

Publication: ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Last Printed: Fri., Sep. 29, 1995
Section: WAR PAGE, Page: 17C, Edition: FIVE STAR LIFT

WITHIN THE LAST couple of months, I've taken on a new look.
   I've added a beard. Don't glance at the picture that runs with this column to see what it looks like. The paper's still running my old picture.
   To get an idea of what my beard looks like, though, I'd suggest that you get a No. 2 pencil and shade in the area of my face where a beard would be.
   Then use the eraser to erase major chunks of the shading. That's the gray hair - to be perfectly honest, white hair - that's in my beard.
   Somehow, the beard came in considerably whiter than the rest of my hair. I've got flecks of gray in my hair - premature, you understand - but somehow my beard seems to be more mature than the top of my head.

All this began with a vacation to Wisconsin my wife, son and I took in July.
   Wisconsin is known for its cheese, and our son brought back several cheeses as souvenirs.
   I brought back a beard.
   Maybe it was State Street in Madison, Wis., where I saw plenty of folks who I suspect thought the Age of Aquarius was still dawning, and Jimi Hendrix was still alive and kissing the sky. Many of them wore beards.
   Maybe it was a back-to-nature thing, some subconscious belief that I would somehow be more manly if I wore a beard.
   But actually I suspect it was because I was on vacation and found it a good reason not to shave.

I'd worn a beard once before, when I was a senior in college. I think I was trying to appear more mature. That was also the year I smoked a pipe - for about three months - until I realized that I didn't really like smoking and that anyway I looked pretty pretentious walking around with a pipe.
   No one had ever told me anything about growing a beard then. So I just let it grow. And grow. And grow. I never trimmed it.
   I recently looked at a picture of myself from back then and realized that I looked like Smoky the Bear with glasses.
   When it came time to start my job search, I quickly shaved the beard, figuring a potential employer might think of me as a revolutionary or something if I kept it. It's been gone now for nearly 18 years.

So I must say I was rather surprised this year when my beard came in. This black-and-white number looked quite different from the one I was so proud of back in the '70s.
   Nonetheless, I decided I'd keep it for a while.
   My new look shocked a few of my fellow staffers when I returned from vacation.
   I wasn't prepared for the responses.

Several people thought I was kissing up to the bosses. You see, two of the bosses at the paper grew beards this year.
   Somehow, I think that if I wanted to kiss up to the bosses, it wouldn't be by growing a beard. Surely there must be more effective ways of doing that.
   A couple of people told me that the beard made me look scholarly. "You look like a college professor, " one reporter told me.
   That's good, I thought. That way, people will think that I know a lot more than I really do. That holds possibilities.

My wife was more blunt.
   "You look old, " she said.
   I've always looked old, I replied.
   "Yes, but you look older, " she said, rubbing it in more. "You look like a black Fidel Castro. Where are the cigars?"
My wife has made it clear that she doesn't care for the beard. If anyone comments favorably on it, she's quick to say, "Please, don't encourage him."

As for my son, he's responded the way a typical teen-ager does to this sort of thing.
What do you think of the beard? I asked him not too long ago.
"Mmm, it's OK, " he shrugged, jumping on his bike and heading out the door.

Meanwhile, my mother hasn't commented on the beard much, except to ask me, "When are you going to shave it off?"
Of course, this is the woman who I often suspect wouldn't be happy until I looked like I did when I was first born. My hair's usually too long for her, too. "You had such good hair when you were a baby, " she's told me more than once.
Ah, yes, such family support.

The beard does have its advantages. Since I've grown it, I haven't heard one of my son's friends say to him, "Your dad looks just like Clarence Thomas." I was beginning to hear this a little too often for comfort. I knew there was a good reason for me to grow the beard.

I haven't yet decided whether to keep the beard, which is why I haven't asked to change the picture that runs with this column.
I'm still trying to decide if I like it.
Right now, though, I guess you could say the beard's growing on me.

Gregory Freeman's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Friday ... < deleted >

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