My Greatest Failing

Some of my close friends will know that I am meant to be with Kesha Rose Sebert. She is the radiant light of my life, the spring in my step, the Jack on my toothbrush. Her charm, incredible social grace, impeccable fashion sense and the almost regal way she carries herself under the incredible burden of superstardom draws me, like a fly, to the million-volt bug zapper that his her personage.

Kesha or Kate Middleton? Sometimes I can't tell either.

Much to my dismay, however, there is something that stands between us. An uncrossable divide between what should be star crossed lovers.  Much more to my dismay, is that this one problem has confounded me before, and will likely confound me again and again until the eventual heat death of the Universe.

I cannot grow a beard.

What does this have to do with my face again?

Seriously, I cannot grow one at all. I can grow a patchy monstrosity over some parts of my face, sure, but there are sections of my beautiful visage that will have nothing of it. The entire left side of my face, for example, is barren as the womb of a 97 year old flaming sandstorm from Dante's Seventh Circle of the Inferno. For those of you that haven't wasted your life going through 14th Century Italian Poetry, that is best translated as "fairly barren."

Why am I sharing this? What can possibly be gained by sharing another of my crippling failures to properly perform the male gender role? I only do it because I need you all to do me a favor. It may seem like a big inconvenience, but here me out:

STOP HAVING EVENTS THAT DEMAND I GROW A BEARD. JUST STOP IT.

For God's sake, what am I supposed to do? Events like Movember, (known amongst my friends as "Mo-what-the-fuck-is-that-on-your-face-oh-my-god-someone-kill-the-spider-growing-on-the-right-side-of-Kevin's-Face), Winter (which lasts 7 months in Kingston), and most depressing of all, the NHL Playoffs, all encourage men to sport their most spectacular facial hair, which leaves me to sport the visible representation of my spectacular failure as a man.

Take the NHL Playoffs, for example. For those of you that aren't aware, during the NHL Playoffs players do not shave, which results in:

Angry Jesus?

And

Gandalf?

And



Vengeful Old Testament Irish God?

What do my best efforts over a similar period of time period yield?





I look like Wolverine in this one - Me at Halloween Last Year

So, in short, atop hosting events that ask us to grow a beard, have a beard, wear a beard, anything like that. Its bad enough that as a Canadian I have to spend the 9 month long winter watching people with beards look simultaneously cooler and warmer than me, stop making me feel even worse by institutionalizing events that make me feel like more of a failure.