Huh

I have never had a beard. Actually, I am not a real heavy-bearded kind of guy by nature nor do I have much chest hair or elsewhere ... I always wonder if there was a Native American (Cleveland Indian?) in my woodpile somewhere in the past ... and the military's rules about grooming are restrictive enough it was easiest to be completely clean-shaven. With retirement I decided just to put down the razor and walk away. All the advice I could Google said not to touch anything for at least a month to see where your natural look ends up; well, it has been six weeks. I am thinking now about the end of the year.

There have been times when the itch or tickle gets annoying but it's not too hard to find a distraction until that goes away. I have been making pitiful excuses out of habit for my ratty look, but a friend took a picture of me last week and I was startled when I saw it. Hey, that looks like a real moustache! And this is beginning to look like a real beard! I don't know why this came as a surprise. I turned 51 this month so why is this unexpected? Every day now I find when I don't say anything first nobody else says anything, either. I feel damn self-conscious like the beard is the first thing that walks into a room before I do, but people give really no reaction at all, and I stopped apologizing.
When growing your own you notice just how many other beards there are walking around, with an odd satisfaction when you find yourself thinking "that one looks like crap."

Ever since I first arrived in Yorktown for training in 1987 I pictured Patrick Henry's stand in the House of Burgesses: "Give me Liberty, or Give me Death!" which I learned as a grade-school kid. I recall General George Washington kicked British butt on the fields behind my house - literally - with the help of the young and gallant Lafayette and the wily Count de Grasse during the American Revolution. When Cuyahoga County Ohio lost or did not count hundreds of votes in a past election I told my cousin she ought to sign up to be a poll worker. Last month she reminded me this is the time of year to apply if I wanted to do so myself. I dropped off some forms at the county offices and tonight we had training on how the poll workers function as a team to conduct and verify voting. There is more to it than you might think. Democracy is hard work.

I've been sworn in as an Officer of Election. About half the poll workers I have met are fairly elderly, and on top of that Virginia is experiencing an unusually compressed election schedule. There are a lot of state and local offices on the normal ballot for November, our Congressional Representative just died so there is a Special Election in December, and Virginia has moved their 2008 Presidential Primary up to February. During my conversations with the Registrar and Chairman of the York County Board of Elections a number of my patriotic impulses and urges burst out of me, weaving in and around stories about my career in the service. I guess something hit home ... tonight I was told I have been nominated to the Board of Elections.

Huh.