That's me, age 38 or so.
Here's me yesterday, at 51.
Fffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuu....
As I'm elbow deep in the longest tour I've done since I left blue water shipping, and I haven't buzzed my head or shaved since June, I'm really hoping I won't look like a caricature of myself when I get home and
clean up again.
You know what's weird? I was a reddish blonde until 40. Now my hair remaining is brownish. And white, obviously. Generally I keep the hair on my head at a #2 buzz, as I lost the male pattern baldness and my hairline is more like... ever see a coyote with mange? Yeah, like a mangy coyote's ass.
The white beard is a bummer. More smelly homeless guy than Sean Connery in Red October.
Also as I age, the gin blossoms I've carried since age 8 look more and more like a garden-variety alkies' face.
I fell in the water in January when I was a kid and my idiot friend and I decided to walk out about 1/2 mile offshore when Boston Harbor froze over. Ice broke under me, etc. etc. by the time I got out and walked to my parents' house I was blacked out and my father, to his credit, threw me in a tepid shower fully clothed until I came to, started screaming from the burning water, and spent the rest of the month grounded while my ears and cheeks turned black from the frostbite.
My father knew a thing or two about it, which was why, as mad as he was, I never got more than grounded and a talking-to. He got knocked in the water in Antarctica, as he was on oceanographic ships before he swallowed the anchor, and got flash frozen himself. As an adult, he told me he was most angry with himself, as I was the son he didn't expect to die dumb, my brothers being somewhat feral as kids.
Seeing myself in that picture, maybe I shouldn't be so mad that everything hurts when I get up in the morning now, until I can stretch and then the hurts recede to their homes in a couple of spots to their background susurrus. Ah well. At least the phase at 45 where I looked like Dollar Tree Louis C.K. is passed anyhow.
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