Shaving like a Real Man

My dad gave me a new razor for Christmas this year. Its a shiny Parker safety razor, solidly made from stainless steel. As soon as I got back from being with my parent s over the holidays, I went straight to the drug store, and bought a boar bristle brush, shaving soap, and a pack of razor blades. I shaved that night, and as soon as the brush touched my face, I knew that I had crossed a threshold. My generation has a completely different idea of what shaving is than my grandfathers did. When a boy has reached the age when he needs to start shaving, he is given whatever the latest gimmick in shaving is; a five bladed razor with moisturizing aloe strips and vibro-action was the latest I heard about (although I hear the vibro-action is pretty cool). For my grandfather, and more so for his father, shaving was part of the art of grooming, and would be performed with delicacy and finesse. This would have been part of a set of skills mastered by a gentleman, and as I slid the razor through the foamy soap, I felt myself standing taller, straighter, more like the gentlemen I sought to emulate by learning such a skill. Yet, there was something primal to this act as well. Men have been shaving for millenia, ever since the first man grew the first beard, and the first wife kissed the first kiss, and told him to do something about that beard. Men from the great civilizations have grown beards, and shaved them off. Caesar of Rome, Alexander the Great, the great Pharaohs of Egypt have all shaved, and their tools have escaped the ravages of time to be found thousands of years later, ready to be sharpened and shaved with once again. I threw away my old Gillette SensorExcel last night, and shaved with a proper razor. As I did so, the spirits of men throughout time seemed to reach forward to me, as if to say, "That is what I call a close shave."