One Less Jewish Beard in the World

Today, I parted ways with my beard of one year.  It’s not an incredibly momentous occasion, but it gives people who want to avoid me a valid excuse to do so; I look like an entirely different person. This beard shaving thing happens once or twice a year and I know the process:  my mom will gush, yelling something like "my baby looks like a baby again!  Not some creepy old Hasid",  My girlfriend will complain and say she feels like she’s kissing a set of lips attached to sandpaper, in two days flat I’ll begin kvetching about the "monotony of my face" (a phrase I lifted from Don Rickles), and then I’ll say "fuck it" and put myself through the painstaking process of growing my beard back.  Strangely enough, I don’t put much thought into my facial hair. My beard has been described as "magical."  It’s a beard of many colors, and is the direct result of much genetic wandering across the European continent:  it’s got Carpathian orange, German brown and traces of Bolshevik black.  Today, right after eating an almond croissant, I looked in the mirror and thought: "wow, that’s so great that I don’t have to pick crumbs out or brush away powdered sugar."  People are saying I look younger, but I’m convinced at 29, I’ve developed a pretty bad set of jowls.