In the Army, people who forgot or neglected to shave in the morning were offered a falsely credulous sort of exhortation, an uncommitted benefit of the doubt, and told that next time they should stand a little closer to their razor(s). It was funny, in context, and the looks of apocalyptic contempt and disdain that men could muster while saying it were worth the price of admission. Which, in the Army, was exactly zero dollars and usually came with the actual signing bonus of having your parents glad to be finally rid of you. Joining the Army was, in the end, the least you could do.

The Army is way back in my rearview now. I don’t have to shave if I don’t want to. And if I ever get published I think I can stop bathing, too. Though I do continue to shave in sort of multivariate fits where any combination of a number of outcomes is possible. I won’t stop bathing. It is, in the end, the least I can do.

But while my face-to-razor distance is no longer a particularly muffled-chuckle-generating ontology, there are things that I am nonetheless having a difficult time placing close enough together. Maybe it’s my eyes: