A cut on my cheek
06/10/25 01:14
I cut myself shaving yesterday. I know what my friends and others who have known me for a while are thinking: “You shave?” I was clean-shaven for my summer job in 1973. When I returned to college that fall, I grew my beard out and have had one ever since. Our children have never seen me without a beard. The joke I often tell about myself is that one day I looked in the mirror and thought, “I’m kind of ugly with a beard.” But when I looked in the mirror to shave it off, I thought, “What if I’m ugly without a beard? I won’t have anything to blame.” So I kept the beard.
I choose to have a beard because I like the way it makes me look. My beard, however, grows quickly and would become scraggly if I didn’t trim the edges. I prefer having straight edges on my cheeks and neck, and I dislike the feeling of hair too close to my mouth. The result is that I don’t take a pass on shaving. Even though I’ve worn a beard and mustache for all of my adult life, I have also shaved all of those years as well.
A trip down the men’s aisle in any drug store reveals that there are a lot of choices when it comes to shaving products. My skin is sensitive so that some products can irritate it. Some of the people I have served have sensitivities to aromas, so I’m not a fan of colognes or aftershaves. I also try to avoid waste and pollution with my personal choices. I’ve settled on a shaving brush and a bar of shaving soap in place of aerosol shaving cream. The choice makes airline travel simple since a bar of soap is not liquid, aerosol, or gel. I think that most razors are pretty silly. I do not need disposable razors with three, five, or seven blades. I have a stainless steel razor that takes a double-edged blade. The razor will last me for the rest of my life, the blades are inexpensive, and I’m not throwing plastic into the garbage all the time, unlike with other razors. I’m happy to keep it simple.
However, it does seem that I am capable of cutting myself. The strange thing is that I don’t know why I cut myself yesterday. It isn’t something that happens very often. I’ve shaved myself thousands of times without cutting myself. And I didn’t just cut myself once yesterday. I have a cut on my cheek and another on my chin. I’m over 70 years old, and I’m walking around looking like a teen who just tried a razor for the first time, though not precisely, as I don’t have pimples.
Little cuts aren’t a problem, though I don’t heal quite as quickly as I once did. I’ll probably have a visible scab for a week or so. The incident will soon be forgotten, though I’m likely to remember it longer because I’ve chosen to write about it. It isn’t the cuts that worry me. What worries me is that I tend to interpret many things in my life as signs that I am aging. I don’t feel particularly old. I have fewer aches and pains than many people my age. I lead an active lifestyle, enjoying activities such as walking, riding my bike, and participating in many activities. Recently, however, I have been wondering if there are signs of aging that I am not aware of.
Over the weekend, I walked from the garage to my study to add an item to my shopping list, and when I arrived, I couldn’t remember what it was I wanted to add. I went back to the garage to see if that would jar my memory. I never did figure out what it was I intended to write on that list. Worrying that my memory is declining doesn’t make remembering any easier.
Shaving has always been a bit of a challenge for me because of he mental challenge of looking in the mirror and having everything reversed. I’m right-handed, and the angles I hold the razor to shave the left side of my face are more natural to me than the ones I use to shave my right cheek. A little slip getting the angle between the blade and my cheek too steep, and I was cutting more than whiskers. And I know from experience that I’ll have to avoid that area until the scab is gone, or I’ll make things worse. The good news is that my hair is now all white, and the whiskers that are missed when shaving don’t show as much as they did years ago.
The trick is to avoid mirrors when I’m not shaving. If I don’t look at the cut, I forget about it. I don’t need to forget about it, however. If it gave me a reason to talk about shaving with our 14-year-old grandson, I’d appreciate the conversation. I could make a case for a good badger shaving brush and a simple razor as alternatives to the expensive and wasteful products sold in stores and advertised on the Internet. I’d like him to form good habits that don’t drain his bank account while being good for the planet. However, I don’t think he wants to turn to me for advice. What his friends say is probably far more important to him than what his old granddad says. Furthermore, he may think that because I have a beard, I don’t shave. I won’t bring up the topic, but I wouldn’t mind if he asked me what razor or shaving soap I use. I have noticed that entering high school this fall has made him more aware of his appearance and more careful in his grooming choices.
In a world facing a climate crisis with over 40 million refugees, in a country where nearly 800,000 people are homeless and almost 14 million children are living in food-insecure households, a little cut on my cheek isn’t a big deal. I hope writing about it will free my mind to think about more important things.
I choose to have a beard because I like the way it makes me look. My beard, however, grows quickly and would become scraggly if I didn’t trim the edges. I prefer having straight edges on my cheeks and neck, and I dislike the feeling of hair too close to my mouth. The result is that I don’t take a pass on shaving. Even though I’ve worn a beard and mustache for all of my adult life, I have also shaved all of those years as well.
A trip down the men’s aisle in any drug store reveals that there are a lot of choices when it comes to shaving products. My skin is sensitive so that some products can irritate it. Some of the people I have served have sensitivities to aromas, so I’m not a fan of colognes or aftershaves. I also try to avoid waste and pollution with my personal choices. I’ve settled on a shaving brush and a bar of shaving soap in place of aerosol shaving cream. The choice makes airline travel simple since a bar of soap is not liquid, aerosol, or gel. I think that most razors are pretty silly. I do not need disposable razors with three, five, or seven blades. I have a stainless steel razor that takes a double-edged blade. The razor will last me for the rest of my life, the blades are inexpensive, and I’m not throwing plastic into the garbage all the time, unlike with other razors. I’m happy to keep it simple.
However, it does seem that I am capable of cutting myself. The strange thing is that I don’t know why I cut myself yesterday. It isn’t something that happens very often. I’ve shaved myself thousands of times without cutting myself. And I didn’t just cut myself once yesterday. I have a cut on my cheek and another on my chin. I’m over 70 years old, and I’m walking around looking like a teen who just tried a razor for the first time, though not precisely, as I don’t have pimples.
Little cuts aren’t a problem, though I don’t heal quite as quickly as I once did. I’ll probably have a visible scab for a week or so. The incident will soon be forgotten, though I’m likely to remember it longer because I’ve chosen to write about it. It isn’t the cuts that worry me. What worries me is that I tend to interpret many things in my life as signs that I am aging. I don’t feel particularly old. I have fewer aches and pains than many people my age. I lead an active lifestyle, enjoying activities such as walking, riding my bike, and participating in many activities. Recently, however, I have been wondering if there are signs of aging that I am not aware of.
Over the weekend, I walked from the garage to my study to add an item to my shopping list, and when I arrived, I couldn’t remember what it was I wanted to add. I went back to the garage to see if that would jar my memory. I never did figure out what it was I intended to write on that list. Worrying that my memory is declining doesn’t make remembering any easier.
Shaving has always been a bit of a challenge for me because of he mental challenge of looking in the mirror and having everything reversed. I’m right-handed, and the angles I hold the razor to shave the left side of my face are more natural to me than the ones I use to shave my right cheek. A little slip getting the angle between the blade and my cheek too steep, and I was cutting more than whiskers. And I know from experience that I’ll have to avoid that area until the scab is gone, or I’ll make things worse. The good news is that my hair is now all white, and the whiskers that are missed when shaving don’t show as much as they did years ago.
The trick is to avoid mirrors when I’m not shaving. If I don’t look at the cut, I forget about it. I don’t need to forget about it, however. If it gave me a reason to talk about shaving with our 14-year-old grandson, I’d appreciate the conversation. I could make a case for a good badger shaving brush and a simple razor as alternatives to the expensive and wasteful products sold in stores and advertised on the Internet. I’d like him to form good habits that don’t drain his bank account while being good for the planet. However, I don’t think he wants to turn to me for advice. What his friends say is probably far more important to him than what his old granddad says. Furthermore, he may think that because I have a beard, I don’t shave. I won’t bring up the topic, but I wouldn’t mind if he asked me what razor or shaving soap I use. I have noticed that entering high school this fall has made him more aware of his appearance and more careful in his grooming choices.
In a world facing a climate crisis with over 40 million refugees, in a country where nearly 800,000 people are homeless and almost 14 million children are living in food-insecure households, a little cut on my cheek isn’t a big deal. I hope writing about it will free my mind to think about more important things.
