My Time Has Come

I'm not much of a fan of omens, but that doesn't prevent me from looking for them and celebrating when I stumble over one. Not all omens are good, however, and when I run across one that I can take as evidence of something negative, I gravitate towards it.

This morning I shaved and, while that's not unusual, I couldn't help but notice how smooth my face was afterwards. Well, that's the purpose of shaving, so that didn't surprise me. What did surprise me, though, was that this morning's shaving was accomplished with the aid of a two-blade razor.

These two-blade razors are so 1980.

It's no news that razors are now up to five blades, and one brand has six, but it's on the rear and not part of the typical shaving face. The insidious progress of time, even in my short life, has taken us from one to five blades, with the promise of more to come. For the past few weeks I've been using my "travel" razor, one with three blades that I bought as an emergency replacement, and all I could think of was the baseball strike.

During that strike one player brought up to fill in for a striking major league player mentioned that the clubhouse was littered with expensive, name brand razors that he couldn't afford. That, alone, showed him the difference between the haves and have-nots, the men and the boys as it were.

Anyway, this morning I discovered that my beard (such as it is) doesn't really need any more than two blades to be removed. It may be that each generation produces a denser, thicker, and tougher beard than the preceeding one, and that would explain why people need an ever-increasing number of blades to achieve the smoothness of their ancestors, but I doubt it.

I think I'm just one of those who don't have the beard-growing ability of the more manly men. Any blade beyond two is wasted on me, but I predict that within five years I won't be able to buy any razor that only has that number.

It's progress, you see, but not any progress that I need.