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When my son, Jack, recently asked me to teach him to shave, it was not an unexpected request. His mustache had been growing for quite some time—since he started puberty, about a year ago. He’d be mad at me for saying this, especially in one of my columns, but it’s true. It started as a single hair, soft and alone toward the end of his lip. Slowly it spread. A matching hair on the opposite end, random sprouts along the route. Finally, after some months, it came in full. When I say ‘full,’ I don’t mean he looked like Tom Selleck. He didn’t have a full set of Rollie Fingers handlebars, or a walrus mustache like Lanny McDonald (Google it). It more closely resembled Errol Flynn, though softer and less noticeable.
As time passed, it became more noticeable by his middle school classmates, who notice everything. It was noticed by his family. It was noticed by random older strangers at the grocery store, who, for reasons still unknown to me, love to point out things like that to adolescent youths. It was noticed by his younger cousin, who reminded him every time she saw him, which is often, that he has a mustache. I saw my son reacting to others noticing his mustache.
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I have a similar shave story from my youth. I was older than Jack—14 at the time and a sophomore in high school. I was active in the high school drama club and had been recently cast as Burt Seldon in our school’s production of Flowers for Algernon. The evening before we opened the show, my drama teacher, the director our play, pulled me aside and told me to go into the dressing room and shave. We were in full stage make-up for the dress rehearsal, and the reflection from said makeup on my face accentuated the soft line of otherwise invisible thin hairs that graced my lip. I was embarrassed and nervous. I had never shaved, nor had I ever had the urge or need to, so I thought. But here I was, alone in the dressing room, sweating under the heat of the round dressing room lights, with a disposable razor and a can of Barbasol, ready to “become a man.”
While I was going through puberty, I was in the church choir. It was the same time period as Flowers for Algernon. The same period of life when hair sprouted along my lip and body. It was at the same time when my body began betraying me, my limbs moved at their own speed and in their own directions. My body odor changed. My brain told me I was angry, but couldn’t tell me why.
I tried, like every adolescent boy, to hide my puberty, to hide my changes, to fade into the wall for a bit. I tried. I was in the Christmas musical at my church, a production like no other. The sanctuary seated almost two thousand, and it would be full for every performance. The 50-plus member choir was arranged on what the called the “Living Christmas Tree,” a 14-level tree some forty feet high, which stood in the back of the stage. Toward the end of the production, I had a solo, a song called “All is Well” which, even before puberty, was the top of my vocal range. As the show approached, so did my own adolescence. I faded into the wall. On the night of the show’s opening, the entire cast and crew gathered in the choir room for a prayer. As the music director prayed, he asked for strength and beauty, that the Lord speak through us for Him, and “that John’s voice doesn’t change until after the run of performances is over.” It didn’t.
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When my son started puberty, it didn’t come gradually. It came all at once. He went to bed one Saturday night, my sweet young twelve-year-old boy, and awoke as a man. I’m sure the changes happened more gradually than that, but it didn’t feel that way. Not to me. Not to him. His voice cracked and popped, soft and melodic to hard and deep. He cleared his throat. I cleared my own throat trying to help. Have you ever had a head cold that moved into your chest and you woke sounding like a 40-year-old smoker
At first, the voice cracking was funny. It was a game. It amused me. I think it amused him, though it’s altogether possible that it perturbed him the way I laughed. It wasn’t until he tried singing when it became bothersome. When your voice changes, you lose all ability to sing in any range. He struggled to sing along with his favorite artists in their octave, switching sometimes to a lower register when his voice allowed. It was here where the reality of puberty set it. It was here where he became aware just how much he was changing.
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When Jack asked me to show him how to shave, I obliged. I asked why he decided it was time, and he cited only his cousin. He didn’t say that I had mentioned it, though I had. He didn’t say mention the old man in the store, or his grandfather, or his older sister. He didn’t blame his classmates or his teachers. He just said it was time. Together we went into the bathroom, where I gathered the requisite tools: a small travel can of shaving cream, rusted on the bottom from years in the cabinet under the sink, a single Gillette razor (there’s irony there) and a warm washcloth.
I showed him how to fill the sink with warm water, to press the warm washcloth to his face to soften the skin, to apply a small dab of cream into the palm of his left hand, and spread it with two fingers on his right. I showed him how to make the face, like your surprised, so that you can get the cream in that spot right below your nose (the philtrum). I showed him on my forearm how to glide the blade, only one direction and never sideways. He watched intently, with both intrigue and fear in his eye.
Then, it was done.
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I don’t have too many recollections of going through puberty. Perhaps the brain seals those memories so you don’t torture yourself. Maybe it wasn’t that bad. Last week I pulled out my old middle school and high school yearbooks and was immediately reminded of how awkward and uncomfortable that period of my life was.
Shaving didn’t make my son a man. It didn’t end his puberty. It doesn’t make his voice stop cracking at the most inopportune times. It didn’t make his brain stop telling him to be angry for no good reason. It won’t make change his smell. Shaving doesn’t make him into a man, nor does it force him to leave his boyhood behind. Those things will happen in their own time. I made it, and so will Jack.
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