Michael D. Davis.

A week or so ago, my Ma came into the room and said, “There’s a dead rat in the garbage.” There wasn’t. I had shaved though, and left several inches of beard hair in the trash. I guess I could see the resemblance.

I never wanted a beard growing up. None of the heroes I worshipped had one. They were all clean-shaven. Alfred Hitchcock, Dean Martin, Vincent Price, Superman, they hardly ever had facial hair, apart from Vincent Price’s iconic mustache.

Then hair started to sprout on my third chin and make its ascent up my face. I still didn’t really care for it, so I started to shave it off and tried to keep that fresh-faced boyhood look about me. However, I have bad skin, so whenever I did shave, the hair was just replaced with a rash. That’s my luck.

In the movies, it is always an iconic moment when a young boy learns to shave. More often than not, it’s depicted as father and son standing side by side in front of the bathroom mirror wearing a matching set of shaving cream covered faces.

It didn’t happen like that for me. Ya see, my dad has always had a beard. I have never seen him without one in my entire life. The old man just lets it grow like the hair on his head until he goes to the barber once or twice a year. Those days are often filled with horror because then he comes home sporting a chin. It’s hideous.

So, when it came to shaving my father was no help. I’m not even sure he knows how. No, I was taught how to shave my beard by my Ma. I don’t know how many other people can say that, but that’s how it was done.

Granted, she had much less of a beard to shave off as an example. I have followed in the Old One’s footsteps by how often I shave, the day usually comes but once or twice a year. A holiday almost.

The other thing is I am simply covered in hair. Apparently, this skips a generation because I have more hair on my toes than my father does on both his arms combined. I guess my grandfather was the same way. I have hair on my shoulders, and on the sides of my hands like I’m an ape.

It’s ridiculous, and sometimes even painful. So, I have asthma, as you may know. And something that you get pretty regularly when you have asthma and heart problems like myself are EKGs.

Now, if you’ve never had an EKG, what they do is they take these little sticker things and put them all over your body to hook you up to a computer. That’s the easy part. Between my bad skin and how much hair I have, getting the things to come back off is where the problem lies. Some nurses are confident in their approach and just tear them off. Others apologize frequently and take the stickers off at an excruciatingly slow pace thinking it will help. And then there’s the ones that just leave them on me and don’t even try.

After one hospital visit, I came home with the stickers still all over me, and for some reason, my sister had had a bad day that day. Knowing what I could do to help, I let her grab a hold and retch the stickers from my body as Ma took video on her phone.

I was left with little red bald patches all over, but my sister was smiling. Another time, the stickers were too tough and too stuck to me. We had to open a pair of scissors and slice down the back of the sticker while simultaneously pulling it from my body. The scissors cut through hair and some skin, but we got them off.

The most absurd anecdote I have to tell today takes place at the Iowa State Fair. In my youth, my family went every year. There used to be this guy with a booth there that sold temporary tattoos and customized dog tags.

One year I had it in my mind I wanted a tattoo. I perused his selection and I picked out a yin-yang symbol made up of black and white tigers. I thought it was the coolest. I waited in line, and eventually, I was called. I sat down on a little stool in front of the man so he could apply my tattoo. I chose to get it on my bicep because I’m a tough guy.

The guy went to apply the tattoo then said, “Oh, wait a minute.” There was too much hair on my arm for the tattoo to take, so he had to shave part of my arm to apply the tattoo to my skin. I was 10 years old.

The thing is I’ve been hairy from the get-go. I was actually born with hair on my back. Picture the cuteness now, lil’ baby Mike, chubby, double chinned, rashy, hairy backed lil’ Mike.