Going through puberty all over again

 

Well this takes me back. 

One of the possible effects of Melphalan chemo is that your hair falls out or stops growing. That happened to me and suddenly my face follicles found themselves back in a smooth 15-year old state for a couple of months. But when the drug effects wear off you get the interesting experience of repeating your teen years of having to start shaving.

I remember going up to Timothy Whites in Pudsey to buy a primitive battery powered shaver (with one of those big bike-torch batteries in it). It felt like a rite of passage. Trainer bra for boys, maybe. 

So now I am back there. The photo shows a very ambitious top lip, but I can assure you that the end of my chin is far far behind, and the sideburns are only perceptible to touch but not to vision.

There has always been a sad history of teenage attempts at facial hair. You can understand it. Shaving is a faff and perhaps some bum-fluff might have a marginally positive effect on someone you fancy. But the effect it has on everyone else is worth considering too. Those wispy little excrescences sticking out from your chin, or the silky sideboards that look like an Afghan hound's ears? Really? Are they intentional?

But I suppose it means you have something to stroke when you are looking thoughtful (no smutty jokes please), and looking thoughtful is a worthwhile ambition when you are 17.

But at 65 (66 next month), it all seems very anachronistic, like looking back half a century at my teen self when I see a mirror. And time's arrow does fly rather wonky for me at the moment, linking past times as if they were now, and making now sometimes feel like eternity (but in a good way). 

So in a month's time my chin will probably be of pensionable age again. And then if I do have the second transplant: oops, puberty all over again.