I permitted my facial hair to grow unfettered for a little over a month. Though it received generally favorable reviews and probably made me look eight to twelve times more thoughtful than usual, there were some concerns.

First, it constantly felt like there was something on my face. Granted, that was because there actually was something on my face, which I suppose goes with the territory, but it was a mildly unpleasant sensation I’d prefer to go without.

Second, I constantly had to check and re-check my face for spaghetti sauce and ice cream and salad dressing. And cake frosting. And bread crumbs. And ketchup and mustard and balsamic mayonnaise and salt and compound butter and basically any sort of remnant of anything I ate. It was mildly amusing the first few times, less so afterwards.

Third, I had aesthetic concerns about the proto-beard. True, the bulk of humanity gazed upon my glorious befurred visage with a reverent awe oft-reserved for perceived miracles and other transcendent phenomena, but all I saw were the flaws. For instance, there was less-than-ideal growth between the “soul patch” and my chinny-chin-chin that, to me, made the beard look incomplete. Furthermore, under decent lighting, the moustache was much redder than the rest of the beard, which was dark brown.

Actually, that’s not entirely accurate, because apparently somebody had been sneaking into my room at night and attaching a bunch of white whiskers next to my real whiskers. So as time went on, I saw a red moustache, brown-black muttonchops, and a white chin. After hours of deliberation, the Council decided that while the white added an acceptable degree of gravitas to the beard, the red was unacceptable, and might even necessitate genetic re-sequencing. Unless, of course, something unfortunate were to happen to the beard.

So after yesterday’s hair shortening, I used the clippers to trim it back a good bit, and will continue to keep it either short or off. A month’s experiment was long enough. The important thing is now I have a good sense of what Alternate Universe Me looks like, in case we must ever do battle.