Keeping the whiskers at bay
My son Jack announced yesterday that it was time he started shaving.
Kids grow up so quick these days, don't they?
He only turned five last week.
"In the olden days, daddy," Jack told me in the car on the way to school, "people used to have moustachios."
"They had WHAT?" I said, trying to decipher his language and drive through traffic at the same time.
"They had moustachios," he repeated.
"Jack, I don't understand what you mean," I said.
"Moustachios. You know, daddy. Hair above their lips," he said.
"Oh, I SEE," I said. "I think you mean moustaches."
"Yes, Jack said. "Moustachies. Look, the man driving that car behind us has one."
I glanced into my rear-view mirror. Sure enough, the driver behind me had a bushy moustache. Little did he know what he had triggered in Jack's mind.
The man did not look all that old.
By then, I suspect Jack has his own definition of how far in the distance the "olden days" actually were.
It seems to me that he thinks the "olden days" era ended the day he was born.
Mummy and daddy were thus brought up in the "olden days" and can tell him all about that very interesting period in man's evolution, including, of course, moustachios, moustachies and moustaches.
"Some men STILL have moustaches," I said.
"And beards, like Santa Claus?" said Jack.
"Yes, those too," I said.
"Why do they?" he said.
"Um, because they don't shave," I said.
I still fondly remember my first whisker as a teenager.
It was a luxuriant strand of hair 10 degrees nor-nor-east of my left ear. I called it Pierre.
I have no proof of this but I am pretty sure that Hollywood modelled the designer stubble look on Pierre.
He would have made a pretty awesome sideburn had he had some friends.
But they really didn't arrive in numbers for some years later.
When they did, I had long since started shaving Pierre at least three times a week.
"I think people should shave - don't you daddy? "said Jack.
"Well, I shave," I said. "Mummy makes me. But not everyone does. Some men like beards and moustaches and have had them for so long they'd probably look silly without them."
"Well, I DON'T WANT TO HAVE HAIR on my face," Jack said. "I know what. You set up your electric shaver for me, daddy, and I'll use it."
"Okay," I said. "But don't worry, Jack, you have got a bit of time up your sleeve yet. Years, in fact."
I forgot though that Jack works on a different time-scale to us grown-ups.
He wanted to have a shave last night just after he cleaned his teeth, and took a lot of persuading that shaving before one went to bed wasn't the done thing.
He relented but did not forget.
As I was cleaning my teeth this morning, he sidled up to me in the bathroom and said: "I'm ready for my shave now, daddy."
At a guess, he is the only five-year-old boy in the whole of Canberra today who went to school wearing Eau Savage after-shave by Christian Dior.
©May 31, 2001 John Martin. All Rights Reserved
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Australian writer John Martin looks at the funny side of parenting in My Son Jack
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