Mustash Grows Older

MY MUSTASHE GROWS OLDER
December 2000

I subscribe to a number of crackpot theories among them the idea that you can calibrate a persons age by using a multiple of ten when counting the number of pills they take everyday. This is typical introvert thinking because we don't ever really check with anyone to see if this is true. However I think it's true because I take six and one half pills a day and I'm 65. I'll get more scientific about this soon because I'm going to count the number of pills Elizabeth takes. Since she's 52 she must be taking one fourth of something.or! she takes a proportionately greater number of pills because she's female. Once I get my research straightened out on this one I'll be able to generalize to the entire population of males and females.

I also notice that there is some kind of mathematical relationship between how old one is and the amount of time it takes to get ready to go somewhere. You know, not just the "make-up" thing, I realize that the older a woman gets the more she has to make up for, but then for we guys there's the various ways to cover the increasing area of skin revealed by our bald "spot" which is quickly becoming more like a bald site, then there's the Retin A, the sunscreen, and now, the mustache dye. Now it takes as much time to get ready to go someplace as it does to be there.

My youngest daughter suggested I grow my mustache back. I've had a clean shaven face for the first time in, oh I donno', maybe twenty years. I kind of got used to it this last year but Selena (11) now says; "I think you should grow your mustache back." So, just for the hell of it I start doing it. As it comes in, gray and poking me like a needle in the lip at unexpected moments, I vacillate; "I wonder if I should keep this thing?" I say to Elizabeth. She hedges and then one day says; "Well, it does make you look distinguished."

"Aha!" I think, "So all this time I have looked like a geek and you didn't tell me?" I finally say that out loud and she responds, as she is supposed to of course; "No, no, it just looks good on you."

"Humph. Too late." I think; "Now I'm stuck with this gray, gristly thing or I'll look dumb and no one will tell me." except my eleven year old of course. And hey! What does she know?

But the seed is planted and the crop is growing. Nothing left to do but color coordinate the thing. So added to the maintenance routine is mustache dye every fourth day. Now mind you, I don't feel any older inside. In fact, I don't think I've aged in thirty years. Of course there's the memory thing, but it's not really too bad and...........................................................

now what was I going to say about that..?

Anyway, obviously my mustache IS getting older so maybe, like the portrait of Dorian Grey, it will take on all the Sturm and Drang of aging and underneath the mouse brown, that "Just for Men" claims matches my thinning hair, I'll still be the thirty-something I think I am.

Coyote On Coyote - More about Coyote by Dick Prosapio

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