Bear Hug

I've started growing a beard.

And this is a big deal for me. I've always thought I carried off the clean-cut look, and I guess I've always been pretty hung up on making sure that people saw me that way.

For at least the last six years, I've always had a goatee, and I've been disappointed in it. I was in awe of those guys who had a dark, thick but neatly trimmed goatee. My dad could do it, even though he always had a thick moustache. My brother can do it, too. I don't understand why it skipped me. Mine always seemed two shades lighter than my hair, and grew rather sparsely.

So I never thought I could grew anything more than a goatee, a Van Dyke, a soul patch, or any of the other variations of a fuzzy chin and lip.

But in a moment of desperation and laziness, the beard started to develop. Now, granted it's not thick or bushy, but it finally has developed into one continuous line of hair from sideburn, chin and sideburn.

Is it coincidence that I noticed, at about the same time as my beard began to grow, that so did my belly? Maybe my postured worsened. Or maybe I am getting more rotund. And Hotass and I observed over the weekend that I carried all of my weight in my stomach - in a nice little round food-baby pouch on my waistline.

Maybe I'm learning to embrace my inner bear. Grrr.