Every time I surf through it, it lures me with headlines like, “Eight Ways to Travel to Europe for $25,” “Seven Secrets for a Healthier Gall Bladder,” or “Six Photos of Lisa Vanderpump You Won’t Believe.” (Generally I skip those, because I don’t know who Lisa Vanderpump is and, even if I did, why would I want to look at photos of her if I can’t believe them?)
But the other day My Yahoo! sucked me in again with: “Five Ways to Make Your Beard Grow Faster.”
So I clicked onto the story, which began with the explanation that “The biggest mistake men make is focusing on the belief that they cannot grow a beard at all, which is extremely rare.”
Right away I was skeptical, because beard-growing is not something that runs in the Stewart family; at least not on the male side. The last time my stepson flew home from Oregon he sported a thick lush beard, which he grew during a layover in Minneapolis. But the only thing that ever grew on my face, not counting zits, was a mustache that my wife described looking like “a caterpillar that crawled onto your upper lip and died there.”
But hope beats eternal on the male jaw. So I read on.
The first of the five ways was, “Give Your Beard the Tools to Grow.” It recommended a diet high in protein, less stress, more sleep and eight glasses of water a day. I don’t think I’d be able to do all those things, though. If I drink eight glasses of water a day, the odds of getting more sleep would be long, because I’d be getting up four times a night to go the bathroom.
The second way was “Commit to Growing a Beard.” Committing to growing a beard is something I used to do annually when I began my vacation in August, but by the end of the month I could still count the whiskers on my chin. Technically, I don’t think that constituted a beard.
No. 3 was, “Work With the Facial Hair You Have,” which was no help at all, seeing as my whole problem was that I had no facial hair with which to work in the first place.
By that point I realized I was wasting my time, even though Ways No. 4 and 5 offered other tips, such as smearing castor oil on my face or buying some kind of spray-on beard thickener.
So I left the site and spent the rest of the afternoon looking at photos of Lisa Vanderpump.
They were unbelievable.
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