To Trim or not to Trim…

I was sitting on our front deck yesterday quietly enjoying a 16-year-old Lagavulin (enjoying a 16-year-old local lass is something only a 16-year-old local lad should think about) and the view of the Pacific Ocean.                                                                               

It was a typical late summer day here - sunny, clear blue skies, about 26 degrees - but with a 20-knot southerly wind pushing waves and whitecaps toward the north. 
If all that rushing, sideways movement of the ocean was meant to be symbolic of life passing me by, I couldn’t give a fat rat’s.

I was also thinking about male vanity. 

We Clibrig males are renown for our rampant, luxuriant eyebrows, which become more rampant and luxuriant with the passage of the years. (I am undecided whether I should be grateful to my forebears for this dominant-male trait.)

This alarming male secondary sex characteristic creates a dilemma - to trim or not to trim, that is the question: whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer ridicule from one’s daughters, or by trimming, avoid it. 

The problem with daughters is that the ridicule will come, either way.

I must admit that it does seem a bit unmanly to trim one’s eyebrows.               

But it is also a bit weird to have big hairy outgrowths hanging over one’s eyes. 

Or having big hairy outgrowths being blown across one’s forehead in a 20-knot southerly wind.                                                                                                                             

On the other hand, shaving one’s face is thought to be quite unremarkable.

I am reminded of a gentleman by the name of Wayne "Scrub" Ridgewell who was always cleanly shaven, but apparently had decided that shaving, by definition, only extended inferiorly to the level of the larynx. Below this level was, to him, part of the chest, and, according to Scrub, everybody knows only spivs and female impersonators shave their chests.                                   

Consequently, Scrub had a huge white fleece-like mass of hair covering his throat between his collar and his adam’s apple, which looked as if a winter stoat was wrapped around his neck.

My point being, if it’s obviously OK to shave your neck, why isn’t it OK to discretely trim your rampant eyebrows?  

(As long as no one catches you at it, I suppose.)