bored of excitement – the griefjunkie blog 

Dear Rachel,

I was on the tube last Thursday, clattering along under the Pentonville Road and
heading into the City, when I became the centre of attention for a very small and
highly giggly child. ‘It’s OK’, said her mother calmly, struggling to contain the squirmin
squirming infant, ‘She thinks you’re a bear.’

Amazingly, this is the second time in three months that I have been mistaken for a
a bear by delighted children, and is the reason that I have decided to shave my
beard off. With the benefit of hindsight, this wasn’t an inspired move immediately
prior to standing outside as gales and blizzards howled around Camden Lock, but it
was that or reach the inevitable point where toddlers would be offering me jars of
honey and asking me where Eeyore is as I battle through Moorgate with the weekends’ stock.

[Clicking Read More now will reveal inept beard related comedy taunts by Pikey Dave]

The removal of my beard always triggers a mirth drought for Pikey Dave. This is
because he has built a Perrier award winning comedy routine around the fact that,
being an adult Caucasian male of Anglo-Norman descent with dark brown follicle
colouring, I will have visible facial hair. It’s all decided in your genes, like your height or starsign. Undeterred, however, Dave will come bounding up like an excited but
horrible Labrador and say ‘No way, you have slight little hairs between your normal
eyebrows, no way that is mental’, like this is pioneering observational comedy. You
wouldn’t go up to a black fella and say ‘Yeah no way, I bet you probably have brown
eyes’ because yes, he probably will. Or, I dunno, go up to someone in a wheelchair
and say ‘No way, I bet you have a nightmare climbing stairs or breakdancing or playing Twister, because you see, yes, yes they will. It isn’t something that needs to be pointed out. Dave has, now I come to think of it, invented a new genre: punchlineless comedy. Idiot.