And some time before we went away, I had suggested to Gary that he shave his moustache off. This may not seem like a big deal, but I've never known Gary without a moustache. Never wanted to. The appeal of moustaches probably started with Tom Selleck in Magnum, PI. That kind of macho thing. Gary was good at wearing a moustache, in many different forms, from handlebar to waxed and curled. I even liked kisses with it. But the appeal of Gary's moustache has been on the wane of late. Not because of the scratchy kisses. Not even because it acted as a filter for his coffee. But rather, where once it was brown, it has of more recent times been far more grey. Looking a bit on the aged side. Here's an example:
He suggested that maybe he could shave it off while we were away - if it didn't look good he had time to grow it back over the 4 weeks before he went back to work.
All good. In theory. The reality was this:
A huge, white, top lip. A seriously round face. An all too striking resemblance to his mum. I have to admit that I found myself staring at his top lip as he talked, mesmerised by this thing I had never before seen, and even recoiling when I'd forgotten about the missing moustache... until a glance at that blindingly white spot jolted my memory. Yuck.
Well, it wasn't just me. The kids also had never seen that white lip either, and weren't too enamored. Alexandra summed it up best: a couple of days after the shave, she looked at Gary, then whispered to me "He still sounds like our dad..."
PS: It's still off. It took about two weeks for me to realise that I was no longer recoiling. The tan helped. But the clincher for Gary was when he went back to work, and amongst the "Have you lost weight??" comments, there were the "You look 30 years younger!" Does that mean he now looks 15? Or that he looked like 60 before? You be the judge...
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