I've only been clean shaven twice in my adult life. Once for about six months because of a job requirement to wear a respirator (the need to continue brathing out-weighed the need to keep my beard) and once for about three weeks due to a short lapse of sanity. The first time I shaved while my infant daughter was down for a nap. She woke up, took one look at me and cried for three days! She couldn't figure out who this stranger with daddy's voice was. The second time she was about three and I remembered the hullabaloo so I had her watch me. She still didn't want anything to do with me until I grew the beard back. Friends that saw me with my wife were very concerned because they didn't recognise me and thought my wife had taken up with some other guy. I guess the beard is such a part of me that I can't distance myself from it.

Jamie