Growing a big handlebar mustache isn't easy.
It's not hard like picking spring rocks out of an 80 acre field, going to 3 hour marketing meetings, or bucking 87 pound bales of alphalpha hay.
But, it isn't easy either.
For one, the thing gets in your mouth. It'll find it's way into your soup, pudding, or soda as if it desires a taste itself.
I've been relegated to using straws in all of my drinks so that I don't have this drippy mop making a big mess.
Another problem is waxing. If I don't wax the thing, I simply look like a shabbier version of my late father. I never wanted a mustache like my dad, which is why I grew this thing in this wacky shape. However, waxing takes time, most of which is spent removing the wax every night before bed, lest the cheeks get poked infinitely all evening.
Teenage boys are perhaps the worst. They giggle, and try to look away as if I didn't see them in the first place. I just stare at them, so that when they peek back, I have a dead-eye stare right back at them. It's not that I don't get the joke (because I do) it's just that they somehow think that I don't think that it looks incredible and funny too. Because, it does.
The last issue, are the questions:
- Is it real? (Yes.)
- How do you get it to do that? Wax? (Yes.)
- Can I touch it? (No. And I won't ask to touch your pubic hair, either.)
About 85% of folks ask if it's real, which is disturbing to me. I guess that I'd wear a fake one around if I could find one that looked real.
Now the good parts about having an outlandish mustache:
- I get photographed way more than ever before.
- I get interviewed more often.
- Folks seem to be more interested in what wares we're hawking.
- Nice girls come by and say "I like your mustache."
- Convention pie* is far more common now. Thank goodness!
So there you have it. I'm in year two of growing this crazy thing, and barring a shaving accident or over waxing, you might just see it at one of our future events.
- Daniel
*And by "Convention pie" I don't mean me cheating on Dawna with some spandexy cos-player with a limp.
I mean real pie, that folks bring for us at conventions. It's crazy, but the word has gotten out that we here at Steam Crow love pie. Apple pie. Tarts. Pot pie. Pastys. All pie.
It's fantastic and much appreciated.
