With A Great Beard Comes Great Responsibility

“Right now, we’ve got freedom and responsibility. It’s a very groovy time.” -Austin Powers

Thick. Lustrous. Gingery. Stupendous. Fantastic. Sprawling. Authoritative. Finer than the pelt of a Colorado marmot. These are just a few of the words that have been used by me to describe my beard. Finer compliments are rarely dished out, and I’m very flattered to have been on the receiving end of them. Recently, an adjective was added to the growing list of accolades — great.

And I didn’t even come up with that one.

A few weeks ago as I walked into line at Cub Foods, the cashier, so taken in by the beauty present before her, knowingly eschewed corporate policy by failing to offer the standard “Hello” and instead said, “Wow, that’s a GREAT beard.” Had a manager been within earshot, this blatant display of off-script dialogue could have gotten her fi-yad.

She even went on to say that it was better than her own husband’s. Men, imagine if you were working at Cub Foods as a cashier and said to some girl, “Hey, nice boobs. Those are better than my wife’s!” You’d be roasted like a suckling pig if your spouse ever found out. And the same goes for women. So you can imagine how truly great this beard must be for a woman to take such a calculated risk, in addition to swimming upstream against the powers-that-be of the mighty Cub Foods employee training videos.

I realize now I have a great responsiblity before me. It is within in my power to become what the Mexicans call a sancho. Dealing with ravenous hordes of women, married or not, openly throwing themselves at me is standard operating procedure. Often, there’s just no time to check the ring finger. Do I want to be a home-wrecker? I don’t know. That’s why this brand new epoch is so exciting and confusing. It’s a very groovy time.