What I Am Going to Do Over Vacation

Oh many things, including growing my goatee back, and this is why.

Since most of the kids in my Journalism Ethics class are seniors, it being a "capstone" course, I always take a field trip on the last day to the legendary Pig and Whistle on Masonic near the U. It serves food, so the under-21 are welcome.

This year the guys in class showed up late -- all two of them -- so at first I was seated at a long table with ten young woman. The happy acccident of my sitting at a table with ten such females -- damned handsome, as the Brits would say; just lovely -- was much admired by the guys at the bar. There were approving looks, and banter.

You know I was vaguely embarrassed, though I'm not sure why.

Matter and antimatter. Tiger and anti-Tiger?

The young ladies were very proper. Two or three had a single beer, several had soft drinks and two or three had nothing at all, having been warned more than once against roofies, I guess. I had a couple Guinness (a very nourishing and wholesome beverage, a fine lunch substitute), and the total bill was still only 33 bucks and change.

"You didn't put on much of a show," Chris the bartender said.

Anyway, the guys from class finally showed up and had a beverage, and one of them said how disappointed he and a couple other guys who had me for journalism classes were that I had shaved off my goatee.

"It makes you look like your evil twin," he said. "We really liked it."

What an irresistible idea, looking like Bad Spock in the episode set in the antimatter -- or, at least bizarro, universe -- where good Kirk suddenly discovers what fun it is to be a bad boy for a while. (If you have a taste for chewing scenery, evil is always the more savory .)

So I'm growing back my chin rag, my face fungus, my stud stubble.

Does he or doesn't he? Is he or isn't he?

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