Fry Guy

I had a french fry lodged in my beard for longer than any person should.  Embarrassing I know, but I was going through a mild bit of depression at that time and not particularly at my apex in cleaning and personal grooming.  How it came to get pushed in there so snugly still baffles me to this day.  I can only think that it must have fallen onto my then thick and long beard and that I must have pushed it in further unknowingly with part of my hand.  And money troubles, girl troubles and any other pedestrian sources of dismay saw to it that it stayed there for a while.

For one thing, I had gotten McDonald’s on the way home at something like 3:30 A.M. even though I was trying to cut back on fast food and could have just as easily sat down at an all-night diner for my post-party, grease-fest.  I must have wanted to punish myself for something with a heaping of the equivalent of reheated cafeteria food.  I remember feeling lousy at that moment and quite tuckered out from the night.  In any case, that was my choice.  I was alone and off from work for the next few days.

In a given order of McDonald’s fries, there are always a few that are extra thin and crispy – the ends of the potato maybe – and they can have rigid, even sharp edges.  For one of those pieces to get wedged in a thick, dark beard is not totally unlikely, but the initial action of the wedging itself seems like a rare incident, much like the sighting of some great, rare white yak in the Yukon or something.

I was reclined when I ate because I ate in bed.  That increases your chances significantly.

I didn’t notice it at first, lodged there ever so delicately just off to the left side of the lower part of my chin.  I tell you I honestly did not know it was there at first.  How it managed not to come out while I slept is still another mystery but I did not leave the house at all in those next few days, nor did I shower.  Again, I was quite bummed out and reclusive during this time and I stayed in my bathrobe through much of it, watching the movie, Withnail and I over and over while hunkered down on the couch.

For the sake of brevity, let’s just jump ahead to Day 3.  I notice a yellow point standing out on my Greek face in the mirror and pull the hairs aside to see that it was.  I did not remove it right away.  In fact, I thought of leaving it there to see how long it could remain as if to go for some sort of depraved Guinness World Record.  But it had long since dried out and the grease from the fry had started to leak out onto my beard and give that portion of it an oily coat much like that of a thoroughbred Border Collie.  I would have a pimple in that spot in no time.

But I pulled it out, thinking that I had hit my bottom.  No, eating it would have marked my hitting of bottom and don’t think I didn’t contemplate doing that as well.  Fortunately, sanity prevailed.  I shaved the unctuous beard that day.  It was, to say the least, not one of my more shining moments.

My parents told me once when they brought me home from the hospital in the days after my birth, they stopped on the way at McDonald’s and bought me my first solid food.  French fries from McDonald’s were the first thing I ever ate.  Arguably the most dangerous food ever wrought by man – and from McDonald’s no less – miniature starched grease cakes cooked in beef tallow were the first solid food to grace my virgin taste buds.  It’s almost like the origin story for the lamest superhero of all time.  But maybe it’s source of insight.  Maybe something like the beard incident was simply bound to happen eventually.

I look better without the beard anyways.

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posted by: Lee Kepraios, IL