Facial Hair and Waterfights

I was fossicking around my hoard of personal effects and computer files the other day and came across a whole bunch of old shite.
Anyway, i thought you cats might like to take a trip down my memory lane.
The year is 2005, i'm living in the laundrette, the overseas trip is still a vague pipedream, and life is swell...


19/10/05

Some would say that twenty-two is no age to be complaining about.
Despite the increasing sense that the weeks appear to be slipping by at Spaceball-esque ‘ludicrous’ speed, there is much to be happy about in the newfound clearing of early twenties country. The mindless years of incapacitated brain function and non-stop wasted naivety have begun to trail off into nostalgia terrain just as life becomes a little less hazy, and finally after all these years of patience you manage to grow some decent bloody facial hair. That’s all I ever wanted back in year twelve, some thumpin-ass sideburns like my mates Chode and Dipper, and that jock named Dogga who got recruited to play senior school football because he resembled the combination of (a) a 25 year old brick shithouse, and (b) Sasquatch. Alas, my coming of age years were spent with dismal attempts at any sort of facial styling, burdened with a smooth baby-arse face and subsequently very little visible masculinity. But now I’m 22, and there’s scratchy, unkempt, crazy hair all over the shop. I am man, and you best hear me roar!

You’d think I’d be happy about all this, but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s all just a little bit too little too late, that the novelty has worn off. Four years down the track, I really couldn’t give a rats clacker about the state of my hirsuite-ness, especially considering I never really shaved my sideburns once the first side patches of hair became visible, and now that they’ve grown out a bit they look like an Advanced Hair transplant from my pubic region. Sideburns - no, ‘Mingeburns’ - perhaps, or maybe ‘Sidepubes’ – there really isn’t much ‘burnin’ going on at all - hardly the lush, rugged rockstar strips I’d craved all those years ago. The hair dream was not as I’d dreamed but rather a whole lot of hassle for very little return – hair that could have been brought to my attention and probably cherished four years ago, but is now just a forlorn mish-mash of half assed goatee and Sideminge.
A bit of an anti-climax.

Still, I shouldn’t complain - at least I fared better in pubescent development than Tom, my Grandfather, who’s diminutive stature throughout high school caused him to be perpetually donned ‘the Mouse’. Although, I should add that puberty finally hit him with gusto at the age of eighteen, shooting him up 3 feet and prompting his chums to elevate his nickname to ‘Mouse King’. A rags to riches story if ever I’d heard one - in a swift few months of pubic fury my ‘pappy was a monarch. Thankfully, I was no mouse, nor any sort of mouse royalty – mine was a relatively smooth, hiccup free transformation, granted, more akin to the mouse extremity than the Sasquatch.

Its one thing to finally feel like a hairy man after all this time, another thing to realise that you aren’t getting any younger, that your rate of hair growth seems to be permutating in direct correlation with the increased responsibilities of ‘adulthood’.
So it was refreshing last Sunday on the first really hot day before summer, to take a mental vacation back into the mindset of a sweaty thirteen year old, and pelt a large group of neighbourhood pre-pubescents with an commanding artillery of waterbombs. All it took was one bomb to smack the side of one kid’s head before the street below our second story balcony was littered with thirty random ten-year-olds, eager to be hit next and retaliate in turn. The bombs flew back and forth for a good three hours, and our mate Dodgy Rogers hooked up a catapult system that proved demoralising for the pre-pube army. Ahh it was great.
For half a day my mates and I felt like kids again, reliving the carefree era when jumping through the front yard sprinkler and declaring war with water were the orders of the day, and shaving your face was still a good seven years off.

Eventually, the cheap water balloons from the local two dollar shop ‘Crazy Price Everything’ became scant, and Suzy the old Greek lady across the road started yelling “you bloody kids, bloody” and began throwing small rocks at our opposition in a bid to deter them from her water supply. The kids were right to be afraid of Suzy, because she ain’t no dreamboat, she’s hairier than me, and frankly, water bombs are funny and rocks just hurt a whole lot. Surrender was inevitable.

The battle was won, albeit through an extraneous Greek ally, but the war had only just begun, and this was comforting to know. For, as long as the water bombs keep being pelted, and youthful reminiscence comes back every now and again to pay a visit, no amount of facial hair will ever let me forget how to have fun like I did when I was a kid, nor force me to take the rigours of adulthood too seriously - not even if I get to be as hairy as Suzy.