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Hygiene and the ManNowadays, even men are expected to be somewhat mindful of their appearance. I can't really say that's a bad thing. Or a good thing. Case and point: shaving. Don't get me wrong, I love the clean-shaven look. It's a great look and one I will probably have until I kick the bucket. I'll admit it; the best feeling in the world is to feel how smooth your chin is minutes after you shave. Aaaaaahh... that's great... not very many things can beat that feeling, unless of course you win the lottery or something. But to get that youthful appearance requires you to keep an a round-the-clock vigil on your face. Is that a hair growing on my chin? Are my sidesburns migrating to my jawbone? Is that a mustache I spy? Enough already! It's maddening! Even the most observant person will be caught off-guard by encroaching facial hair they didn't spot yesterday. I started experimenting with shaving when I was 16. My hair wasn't really growing that much, but it was just enough to swipe at with a razor. Cool. Long before I discovered the wonders of shaving cream, I used to soap up my face and have at it with a razor. Obviously, with all that water splashing about and soap flying everywhere, it was a pretty big mess. On top of that, my technique wasn't so hot. To my dismay, sometimes I would find a large swath of black on some hard-to-reach spot on my face I obviously missed. Then I'd have to go back and shave again. Rarely did I get a good shave on the first try. And then there's blood. Most people faint at the sight of it. For me, as a rookie shaver, it was a fairly common spectacle to behold. Yuck. I would have to resort to taking bits of toilet paper and using them to stop the flow of blood. Looking into the trash can after I shaved, you'd swear a girl was having her period or something. In short, I wasn't the greatest shaver. Sometimes, if I didn't feel like soaping up, I'd just grab a jar of peanut butter and smear it on my face. I know it sounds disgusting, but it worked wonders. Peanut butter was almost as good as shaving cream. Obviously, there were several problems with this. The first, I found out the hard way. Peanut butter is a little bit difficult to clean out of your razor. Not fun at all. Second, if you don't wash off the peanut butter, you are begging for your face to break out in pimples. Now that was gross. In a way, I was actually having to use soap and water anyway, so what was the point? And finally, peanut butter is pretty expensive. Holy crap, $5 a jar? That's pretty steep for shaving cream. I only used this technique three more times before I swore off of it for good. So what's a guy gotta do to get a decent shave? Get an upgrade. Sick of getting crappy shaves, I decided it was time to get an upgrade. I went to the Target store and bought a Gillette Mach 3 razor plus some shaving cream for $7. Happy me. The results were a little impressive, but there were still some sore spots, like the patch of hair you never catch and the fact the shave isn't as close as you'd like. If you can still see hair, not close enough! I thought. There was something wrong with my technique, and I asked my dad if he had any pointers. That was probably the smartest thing I did. Dad quickly pointed out the I was only shaving with down strokes, so I was getting the job half done. You gotta clean it up as well, Dad told me. And I wasn't stretching my skin so more of the hair was exposed, he added. I'm surprised Dad didn't call me "grasshopper" when he was telling me all of this. There you go, I had all the tools I needed for the mythical "close shave". The first time I got a shave that was anything near close was probably around the summer of 2000, right before my trip to Canada. It felt so great! And I felt so wise! I couldn't resist looking in the mirror and stroking my chin because it felt like a baby's butt. To be truthful, even to this day, I don't get tired of stroking a newly-shaved chin. Wait, that reminds me, I have to go run down to the store; I'm almost out of shaving cream.
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