Did a Caterpillar Land on Your Upper Lip?

It is no small thing for a man to start growing a moustache.

The results, as with many long-range planning efforts, lie far into the future. Success is uncertain and in the meantime you are subject to every kind of observation from the general public.

Comment can be ongoing and severe during this length of time, what you might call the open season.

I do not know how long is the time between the first planting of the seeds of corn or wheat, milo or soybeans, and the final full grown shoot, and I would guess most of these commentators don’t either. However, they certainly seem willing in the case of agriculture to show some patience.

They do not yell out at the farmer as they drive by, “I would have expected your milo to be quite a bit further along by now. If I were you, I would just give up.”

To the contrary. The farmer has a special place in our regard and we leave it to him to decide just how long and at what speed it is best to grow these fine crops.

You would think some of these bystanders and color commentators and opponents of modern fashion that I speak of would extend the same courtesy to the moustache-grower.

You would think that people, who otherwise are content to let Nature determine the frequency of rainfall, distribution of wind, and blueness or otherwise of the sky, would be content to let Her establish the speed of a moustache from its tender vulnerable birth to its full flowering.

I don’t know why it is, but people feel a full freedom, perhaps even an obligation, to comment on this matter.

This is a shame, as patience is a virtue in all things, and most especially in moustache-growing.

The moustache-grower by rights ought to be accorded a higher level of respect than your ordinary citizen. He is attempting something whose outcome is most uncertain, and which points out the very fragility at the center of life.

I’m aware that we possess only a small fraction of the great Greek tragedies from ancient times, those of Aeschylus and his chums, which is why I take for granted that there are several fine three-acters on the subject of moustache-growing among the lost plays.

It is a natural subject for the writer seeking to convey the folly and eventual fruitlessness of man’s efforts in this universe of ours.

Success in these matters I think we can say is relative. For many of us, we do not ask that a moustache actually look good, only that it look like a moustache, and not like a grape juice stain upon our upper lip, or a smudge of ink that we have accidentally placed there while reading the morning paper, or a caterpillar who has wandered there in an absent-minded moment and taken up residence.

Many fine heroes of history as well as many famous men of stage and screen had perfectly foul moustaches, but we don’t hold that against them. I can’t think of these fine people just at this moment, but I am sure they are out there.

There are certain men with a heavy beard who can grow a moustache nearly by mistake as it were. If they somehow forget that morning to shave the upper lip, they have a moustache by noon that is superior to your effort of nearly a month.

This strikes me as a handy feature to have in certain social occasions, such as when being asked to attend as a guest of honor at one of those lineups down at the police station where the witness is asked to point out the man who stole the bag of candy from the candy store and when asked directly about you says, “he looks a near perfect match, except this master thief did not have a moustache as this fellow does.”

Or to take another occasion, if you are expected to be standing on the altar getting married at a certain time late in the afternoon of this or that day of the weekend and are instead intent on laying low among the congregation at the back of the church for some reason known only to you, and the word goes out to the crowd be on the lookout for a man of about your height, weight, complexion, dress, right or left handedness, and hair color but that individual is also said to be clean shaven, you, heavily-moustachioed as you are, can join the rest of the congregation in looking from side to side and in the pews behind you to see if you can be the one to catch the scoundrel.

The bad moustache-grower, why does he do what he does? This is a question for the ages, and I suppose we will never know.

For some reason, upon some morning, he looks upon his face in the mirror and determines that something is missing.

This is often, perhaps usually, perhaps even always, a mistake.

If Nature had intended this individual to have a moustache she would have given him one at birth.

Nature, in her wisdom, follows the first rule of the universe and determines to first do no harm.

She has arranged and balanced the facial features in a way so that they do the least harm to one another and leaves it at that.

But along comes Man, who upsets this delicate ecosystem. 

Upon looking upon his features in an unemotional way, he might say that while you can’t say much individually for the nose, the eyes, the eyebrows, the ears, the cheekbones, the lips, the teeth, and so on, he can at least say that they pull together in an ‘we’re all in this together’ type of spirit, make the best of a challenging situation, and present to the world a face that can be variously described as honest or plainspoken or friendly or affable or pleasant, but which in any event, gets the job done.

They have arrived, these features, at a point where this is just about as good as it is going to get, and they are to be commended for their efforts.

This is what he should say.

Now, throw a moustache into the mix and see how the equation changes. The delicate relationships that used to co-exist between eyebrow and nose or chin and nostril or ear and jaw have now been put in discord. The equilibrium has been upset.

The previously honest or friendly face now looks like it belongs to a petty criminal, a forger say or a counterfeiter, one who is reluctant to have his picture taken at all, or like a resentful child whose cotton candy you have just confiscated and who is conspiring to get you back for that, no matter if it takes him the rest of his and your lifetime.

Well, as I say, the moustache-grower is more to be pitied than censured, and walks around blissfully unaware of how frightful it actually looks and how painful it is to the eyes.

If only the rest of us could say the same. As I say, it’s the stuff of Greek tragedy.