Edginess

A few weeks ago I traveled out of town to visit family. When I got back on the following Tuesday I realized that I had forgotten the power cord for my electric razor at my in-laws’ house.

My skin is more comfortable with an electric razor, but my beard looks awful when I don’t shave. I might look rugged for 2 days, but pretty soon my face looks like a mangy mutt with various splotches of fur that point in random directions.

Too keep myself at least moderately presentable until my power cord arrived in the mail, I decided to get some disposable razors at the local supermarket. Rather than paying $5 per item for the razors I had bought in the past (because I am on a little bit of a budget) I decided to just go with getting some BICs. The power cord should arrive within a week, so why should I spend any more than I need (thankfully, I already had some shaving gel). So I picked up one triple-blade BIC and a bag of single-blade BICs.

My skin doesn’t do so well with blade shaving. In the past, each time I used a triple-bladed razor, I end up with lots of nicks (I’ve gotten used to keeping tissue handy whenever I shave this way). But the BIC razors can’t be that different from the expensive razors, right?

For the subsequent 3 days I went to work that week, shaving went pretty well. I used the disposable triple-bladed razor and the repercussions were only a few dozen blood specs each day and an constant obnoxious burning sensation starting the third day. To reduce the potential damage I shaved everything except my goatee; That could wait until I had the power cord to my electric razor back.

I didn’t shave on Saturday, and on Sunday I decided to downgrade to the single-blade disposable razor. That went well, except that the constant burning seemed to multiply in intensity.

I didn’t want to go back to the triple-blade (it was getting dull). And because for the prior week I had been shaving against the grain of my beard, this morning I decided to shave with the gain. The shave might not be as close, but at least I should be less likely to nick myself and it should be less irritating to my skin.

Well, I was half-right. The irritation was significantly less than yesterday, but not only did I get more nicks than usual, they were worse.

So bad, in fact, that I had to put a large bandage on my right cheek (okay, I could have put a smaller bandage if I had any in stock, but to contain the bleeding still required a bandage). My left cheek has a few visible nicks that managed to stop bleeding before I left for work.

And work was miserable. Everyone I met had to ask me what happened to my face. The weirdest response was the manager (not mine) who just stared at me while lecturing about some topic in a large meeting. My favorite response was my coworker who literally jumped backward like I was a zombie when he saw my face and exclaimed,

“What happened to you?”

My only response was a sheepish, “I left my power cord at my in-laws’ and apparently I’m not good with a BIC.”

However, the cuts on my face, in combination with the bandages on my left hand, do make it look as though I got into a bar fight.

*eyeroll*