The Wahl Custom Shave System

My husband and I continue to say "he has a beard, he must be really smart" and start snickering, taken from http://sneathenfamily.blogspot.com/2011/01/funny-friday.html this video.  The ridiculousness of all of it just strikes a chord with us.  Obviously, the fact that someone has a beard, does not make them smarter than you.  In the video, if you haven't seen it, the Special Ed director is telling a parent their school psychologist is smarter than her because he has a PHd.  When the mom says that she also has a PHd he follows with "but he has a beard."  Tt is also funny (to us) because beards have long been a topic of conversation in our house.  I am not sure why, but Daniel loves beards.  In the same way that he yells out "look a little yellow car" or "look a red car" or "look a motor home" or "look a (insert emergency vehicle here)" he yells out "look that guy has a beard!"  The obvious difference between all of these things is that a motor home doesn't turn and look at you with the expression of "yeah, so what?" on it's face.  And if the guy has a really loooong beard.  Forget about it!  It's his FAVORITE. He gets so excited he can barely contain himself.   You would think that ZZ Top would be his favorite band, but I haven't introduced that group to him, yet.

Although I can hear Daniel now, walking around singing "Sharp Dressed Man" whenever he is feeling particularly handsome...

Yes, Daniel loves a beard.  When Todd has missed a morning shave, Daniel has loved to rub his hands on the stubble and talk about his whiskers.  I wish I knew what the draw was, but I do not.  Come to think of it, having hair just growing out of your face might just seem silly enough to draw his attention.  Why does that happen?  Why do some people have it and some don't?  All possible questions going through his mind. 

With conversations on beards he is SURE to start scripting about "Wahl's beard and mustache trimmers".  He knows entire ads about these things.  Now THAT, I know where that comes from.  So I'll digress for a moment.  Back when he was about three years old and things were rapidly falling apart in our lives, haircuts became a huge huge problem.  Of course Daniel has always been a kid with the thickest, fullest head of hair on the planet.  At 6 months old he lost all that baby fuzz, it just fell out one day.  I swear to you that weeks later he had a full head of hair.  This caused us to start getting haircuts by his first birthday.  At first it wasn't a problem.  He'd go and sit in the car at the kid hair salon that had video's over head playing Barney.  He'd get his sucker and be a happy kid.  Then, as with everything else, one day it just changed.  He wouldn't go.  He was scared to death, he'd go into an absolute meltdown kicking and screaming, fight or flight.  I had no idea what to do with him.  After numerous tries from both my husband and I and several instances of slinking with a screaming kid unsuccessfully out of the kid salon, we gave up.  I went and bought a clipper set.  Did this solve my problem?  NO.  But it did save us public humiliation and we shaved him at home.  Don't get me wrong, it wasn't necessarily us demanding he have short hair.  Not only did he hate haircuts, but he hated having long hair.  This is what you'd call a vicious circle of hell.  At the time we didn't understand that his sensory system was out of control, that the clippers probably DID actually hurt.  We didn't know he had autism and what that meant.  So, and this pains me to say, we held him down and cut his hair with clippers.  He would scream and fight and it was HORRIBLE and exhausting. 

Along with those clippers I purchased, came an instructional video.  I don't remember the details on how it started, but he started watching this video and of course, to this day, he remembers every word of it.  It was a rather old video and he still starts quoting about "the flat top" or the "fade" haircuts.  All of the possibilities with the "Wahl custom shave system!"  He scripts on and on and always ends with "Wahl makes it easy".  He says it every time we go to get his haircut or mention that he needs one.  We are actually going today after school.  I am happy to say that he now goes to my (wonderful!) stylist and successfully gets a very nice haircut!  It DOES get easier!

So one day he saw a commercial for the beard and mustache trimmer.  Well, that was IT.  Since then he says that someday he WILL have a beard AND get to use the Wahl beard and mustache trimmer.  Could anything possibly be better than that!?  I have heard it for years!  This weekend, I was sitting next to him at Zachary's basketball game.  I looked over at him, in profile and tried to brush something off of his chin.  I gasped.  Really, I gasped! Because I realized what I was brushing away was ATTACHED.  In fact there was more than one.  There were MANY long whiskers on his chin.  I could see a shadow over his lip.  He is growing facial hair.  He asked me in a very annoyed way what was wrong when I looked so shocked.  I told him he had whiskers on his chin.  To which he simply said "I'm getting old.  Now I can get a Wahl beard and mustache trimmer!"  He got a very self satisfied smirk on his face and said, "I want a beard".    At least he'll be smart.