I showed my wife something she’s never seen before on Sunday morning.

My chin

That’s right, after nearly 10 years under cover, I’ve shaved the bugger and let him out for some fresh air.

Really it had gone on too long. Back in 94 or 95, a few of us headed to Tioman island, off the East coast of peninsula Malaysia, for a weekend break. Given that Tioman, and the area of Tioman known as ABC, or Air Betang Campung, was famed for its high concentration of beardy travellers, we decided to mix with the “locals” and grow our own. They were known at the time as Bok Barts, so named by a South African mate of ours, means Goat Beard in Afrikaans, apparently.

The weekend went off without a hitch, except for nearly getting stuck on the island due to all the ferry captains being on holiday (not really a hitch at all, then) and we found ourselves back in Singapore and at work refreshed and envigoured, and with sprouts of hair sticking out of our chins.

Some of us chose to keep them, me included.

Not much later and I met Andrea, the crazy beer quaffing woman destined to become my wife. The Bok Bart stayed.
It was later described by the brother of a friend of mine of giving me the aspect of an “upside down onion.” An odd description that had everyone around me in fits for several minutes and still gets mentioned every so often in passing. Never saw the funny side myself...

On our honey moon in 2000 / 2001, I decided to further augment the bok with some quite vicious lamb chops that slowly grew down my face until eventually they merged into a sort of “dishevelled Lincoln.” This later became the source of my most recent nickname “amish.” Thank the lord for such imaginative friends, I wouldn’t know what to call myself if they didn’t work tirelessly to come up with new and ever wittier nicknames for me.

So, for the last 2 years I have had most of a full beard. I always thought that the beard looked pretty good on me because I have quite a thin face and it helped to fill it out a little. Clearly I was deluding myself. I may have HAD a thin face but I most certainly do not HAVE one. Now, with the beard off and my scalp bare to the sky (I have also been shaving my head for a couple of years, in an attempt to avoid the insidious comb-over that I was being driven towards) I have a head like a beach ball, not to mention an extra chin that I didn’t know about.

It’s a funny feeling to find out that you own face got fat whilst you weren’t looking.

Question is what should I do about it?

I’m tempted to just grow the beard back and pretend that the whole sorry episode never happened.