Shaving Cream Is Important

Ties o’ the Day are pleased to be posing with many incarnations of an American Christmas icon: The movie, A CHRISTMAS STORY’s “major award.” Ain’t nothin’ better than a leg lamp or two. Aside from two actual leg lamps in the photo, we have our leg lamp stocking, our Old Man-and-his-major-award bobble head, our leg lamp night-light, and our leg lamp tree ornament (hanging from the light switch).

At the beginning of the Christmas season every year, we jump into our one-horse open Buick and take a jaunt to COSTCO– where we buy bigly cases of shaving cream and razors. We need these supplies in order to properly shave our lamps’ legs, so they will be presentable for their seasonal admirers. You will not believe how much hair these legs can grow while they sit in a closet for eleven months a year. I wish my head hairs grew as quickly.

I haven’t had my hairs cut since the first of May, and it’s  got a long way to grow until it’s long enough that I can declare it’s long, and then promptly shave it off. Growing my hairs out is a pain in the ass, which is one reason this is the final time I’ll do it. I grumble about growing out my hairs in my posts routinely, and Suzanne will tell you she’s tired of hearing me bellyache about the project too. But I’ve decided to give the process a larger meaning, which will surely force me to be more pleasant about my temporarily awkward, stoopid mop.

I’m making it a symbolic quest for discipline. And I’m deciding to let it be an exercise in patience. Who can’t use a little more discipline and patience? Or a boatload of discipline and patience, in my case. I’m going to make my mop one of my lesser Higher Powers, temporarily. And I’m not being disrespectful of, or glib about, the term “Higher Power.” Learning more discipline and patience is serious business.

In AA, I discovered you have to find and acknowledge your Higher Power. Most alcoholics cannot successfully not-drink on their own. You’ve gotta have more power than your willpower. A Higher Power can be any person, place, thing, or idea that helps you not drink. It has strength when you don’t. You appeal to it when you feel like you don’t have enough whatever-it-is-in-yourself to not pick up a drink. For most people, their Higher Power is God. But it doesn’t have to be God, and you can certainly have as many Higher Powers as you need. Trust me: I’ve needed more than one. The dog of my life, the late Araby, was my first Higher Power.

But today, I’m adopting as one of my lesser Higher Powers the idea of growing out my head hairs. I must accept my hair every day for what it is. I must appreciate it in whatever state it’s in on any given day. I must learn from its existence. And I must discipline myself to let that same  acceptance and appreciation radiate out to what surrounds me– people, places, things, and ideas in my life. The smallest things can give us strength– if we’ll see them with our own new eyes. We make things matter. We can learn from anything if we decide to.

I know this thinking sounds silly, maybe even crazy. And I did not think about the topic at all until I started writing this post. So I’m still trying to make it make sense. I will be thinking it into a reasonable idea. And if I can’t make it make sense, I’ll have to think of something else. It’s okay to do that, you know. It’s not weakness to refine your thinking to the point where you have to change your mind sometimes.

It can be a powerful thing to do something simply for the purpose of maintaining the discipline to see it through.

[I’m simplifying the meaning and idea of a Higher Power, so don’t quote me about it.]

HOLIDAY TIE TALLY: 27 Bow ties. 73 Neckties.