I’ve now been shaving for 10 months, which means I have the skills of a 14-year-old or thereabouts. I’m still learning this whole thing. So I’m at the gym last week and shave after my shower. It was my first shave at the gym. I had my rig all set up, and a minute or two into the enterprise, two other guys walk in, plop down their shaving kits, and go to it. They finished well before I did and walked away. While I’m not normally a “compare yourself to other men at the gym” kind of guy, I somehow found this episode slightly humiliating. So I decided to try and shave faster.

You can guess what happened. Last evening as some friends arrived to go out to dinner, I hadn’t quite finished bleeding profusely from a giant gash in my chin.

At least now I know how it is that men come to have giant nicks in their chins from time to time.

To add insult to injury, I felt compelled to explain to them (none of whom had ever seen me with a beard) that I had only been clean shaven for a few months and was still figuring it all out.