Part I: In the Beginning.
Let me tell you about Thanksgiving. For most families, Thanksgiving involves
watching Detroit and Dallas lose a football game while everybody stuffs
down gravy and beer. My family is different. We sit around playing word
games. A favorite is one in which a person picks a word out of the dictionary,
and everybody else writes down a fake definition for it. All of the prospective
definitions are read out loud, and you get points by fooling other people
to pick yours while you pick the right one. It’s actually a lot
of fun, but I think you can start to get an idea here that we are dealing
with some frighteningly bright individuals, including 6 published writers,
3 PhD’s, and a certifiable mad genius rocket scientist. And one
guy with a drool cup who really wants to know the score of the Detroit
game- OK maybe my brother too, and my dad secretly wants to watch also,
but this isn’t about them and their inner desire for normalcy. Oh
no. This is about my quest for equal footing, my quest for intellectual
gigantism. There’s only so many times a boy can survive cousin Ben
at age 9 drawing a @#%* ing topographical map of the neighborhood that
shows accurate altitude differentials while you’re practicing power
slides on your rad new Kryptonics skateboard with the 65mm wheels and
the Tracker trucks, do you know what I am saying? “So Uncle Ray,
they let you submit nominations for the Nobel Prize, that’s cool,
but I won most improved in baseball because no one sucked more than me”-tell
me, how many times can a young man have that conversation?
But all of that has changed now. It took years of brainstorming, of following
many promising leads only to have them dashed on the sharp igneous rocks
of failure, but now I too have earned my place at the Thanksgiving Day
dinner table. I have changed the world, or at least pop culture oh so
slightly, with my greatest invention. And in the tradition of my fellow
scientists, I have immodestly named it after me. There is an element in
the periodic table called Einsteinium, so now there is a facial hair configuration
that I proudly call- “The Sean”…
Part II: The Journey
OK, before we go on the journey, I need to set the stage, because the
nature of my invention can be confoundingly confusing to many at first
blush. “What the @#%* is that, dude” has been a common cry
from my naysayers, for example. Well it is not a goatee. It is not a shaving
accident, although by the first light of day it could be mistaken for
one. It is, however the ultimate facial hair expression of yin and yang,
masculinity and sensitivity, her needs vs. my needs. And now, friends,
let’s take The Journey…
Part III: Now Actually the Journey
The standard goatee served me well for many years, but over time it’s
flaws became apparent. The mustache would occlude the upper lip, thereby
depriving the owner of wanted comments like ”you sure got a purdy
mouth” (see exhibit A)
Unfortunately, when I attempted to counter by resorting to partial depilitation, the hairs were transformed into reinforced sharpened bristles, which garnered the aforementioned goatee owner a lot of shit from his girlfriend. ”Prickles, Oww!” Ah yes, the inevitable post-smooch response. Not conductive to more nookie, as charted in exhibit 2:
The Soulpatch was an option. However, it seemed like a waste of my God-given facial follicular capabilities- I was the first in my class who could do the Miami Vice, after all (Try that, cousin Ben!) So an extended soulpatch seemed like a promising solution (see exhibit III)
A bold, new statement that
was totally working on the N/S scale (Aw Yeah!), I was digging it until
an experience left me with a certain trepidation, not to mention a certain
amount of bile in my stomach. I work with a guy I’ll call Caveman
Tom, the kind of guy who actually says to women walking by, “could
you get any bettah looking?” He has a telescope in his office that
he uses to look at women eating their lunch on the roof deck of the opposing
office building. Upon the unveiling of my new look, he squinted, and with
a serious concerned tone whispered in my ear, “you know what that
looks like, right?” Oh no, no, NO! No. I know I made the “purdy
mouth” comment before, but no @#%*in’ way could I have Caveman
Tom adjusting himself whilst thinking about my mouth in a feminine anatomic
capacity!! And that was the end of that. Besides pretending not to be
in love with Sekka Shure in the 2nd grade, that’s the only time
in my life that I’ve caved to peer pressure. I should have said,
“hey Tom, I guess now I know what your wife’s pussy looks
like,” but I didn’t. I slunk back to the lab, beaten.
Beaten maybe, but unbowed, my friends, unbowed. Out of the ashes of defeat
came sweet winged victory. Turning my rage inward, I worked with a ferocity
previously unreachable, a crystalline focus in which the impossible became
not impossible! In an instant I knew what Einstein must have felt; “E=mc3?
Nein, das ist nicht richtig! , E=, um, um, JAWOHL! Ich habe dis!”
Part IV: What the @#%* is it?
I’m not saying I know what Reed Richards felt when he discovered
(well, found) the Ultimate Nullifier in FF#48, but I reached the table
of the smarties with the creation of The Sean. In a totally unintuitive
leap, made possible only by the crudity of co-workers and the gauntlet
of Thanksgiving Smartypantses, I came up with the ultimate facial hair
solution: If the mustache is “Prickles”, but the Goatee is
the most bitchen facial hair genre…hmm… if I subtract the
Mustache from the Goatee like so, if E is a cool letter, mathematically
that gives us…(See Exhibit Four)
Part V: The Future
Well, after I did it, I’ve seen many young men follow in my footsteps, and perhaps someday some young scientist will build on the back of my invention, much like Feynman and perhaps even Hawking and Witten did off the back of my beloved Einstein. Progress is good, and humanity must surge forward, balancing great power with great responsibility. I would not stand in the way of progress just so I’d stay at the forefront of facial follicle design. Enough. I have achieved more than I dreamed possible, more than that dumb ass at the Thanksgiving Day dinner table with the drool cup could ever imagine. Now when I greet Uncle Ray on a cool November eve, we meet as equals, as fellow travelers on the lonely yet satisfying path of scientific self-sacrifice. No friends, my work is done.
But…I cannot stay still for long. A gift unused is a sin, and if you’re going to sin it should be with 2 or 3 hookers in Vegas, not over something so lame as unfulfilled potential. So now what? I guess I keep inventing. After all, in science, you’re only as good as your last invention, right Uncle Ray?