Rude awakening

Stop the Presses column by Chris Graham
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I’d been growing a beard for a few months – well, not exactly growing one, you know, as much as just not shaving a two- or three-day growth of stubble off, hoping to get that Don Johnson look from “Miami Vice” vibe going for me and all.
And then I saw myself on TV.
And I looked like … Todd Foster.
“Egads!” I said to the TV screen, then immediately went to the bathroom and grabbed the first dull razor that I could find.

And then …
“You shaved!” my wife exclaimed.
She’d been giving me a hard time about the playoff-hockey beard that I’d been keeping lo these many moons.
“But … what made you do it?”
“I … uh … I just wanted a different look,” I said.

I didn’t want to admit that I didn’t like it that the beard made me look like I have jowls.
That was the first thing.
The big thing …
“Foster,” I said to myself as I looked in the mirror one last time before wielding the Bic.
They say that TV adds 20 pounds.
Maybe so.
But … that?
Now I’m back to being my matinee-idol old self. Such as that was.

Chris Graham is the executive editor of The Augusta Free Press.