Thread: Reflecting: How did we get here?

I've told this story before on the forum since recently joining, but here goes again:

Back in the 60s when I first started shaving I had gotten myself a SR thinking I would be able to shave myself like I had seen Clark Gable do in a movie where he asks the barber if he can borrow his fixings, then lathers up, and shaves himself, wiping the lather off the blade onto a sheet of paper.

Well, it didn't work out quite like I planned and after dealing with sharpening, stropping, and everything else my dad recognized my frustration and introduced me to the DE. This was before canned foam was as popular as it is today, so a brush and soap in a cup where already in my kit, and stayed in use.

I shaved with a DE for close to 35 years before switching to a disposable, because the DE blades were getting harder and harder to find and more and more expensive when you did find them. Somewhere during that time the triple-head electric razor became real popular and I tried one out but all it did was give me face burn.

In my over 40 years of shaving I've shaved just about every day except during the times I've had a beard, which was before it turned gray and my wife started complaining. The beard would be something I would grow out every other 6 months or so. Even then I would still daily shave under my neck and along my cheek-line to give the bread a nice sharp edge all around.

During my lifetime I’ve even had barber SR shaves but always hated all the post shave lotions they used. It must have been the places I went to because I always felt like there were fumes coming off my face, and my eyes would water until I got home and washed my face.

Sometime about 5 years ago my job/position changed to where I the didn't need me to come in the office, at all. The first result was that I stopped shaving (I also stopped getting out of bed – but that’s another story). Then my wife started complaining so I shaved during the week (I also got out of bed every morning), but not on the weekends unless we had something to do. Then my job/position changed again to where they wanted me to work virtually 3 days a week and in the office 2 days. At that point I only shaved on mornings that I had to go to the office and the weekend nights where my wife and I went out for diner.

I had gotten to the point where, right out of the shower, I would spray on the canned foam and make a series of downstrokes followed by opposite upstrokes with a plastic 3 blade disposable, keeping the shave to no more than 50 (25 each way) strokes max. And call it quits.

Truth was, most times I gave myself a crappy shave. I had also stopped changing the blades. For a while I even stopped using the foam and just shaved dry. My face was getting rough and not looking too good.

Then I saw SRs being used on the internet – now, like 3 weeks later, I am back to using both my old DE(s) and SR while performing a full-on pre and post shave routine.

I’m even shaving on days when I don’t have to go into the office or have anything to do on the weekend that would require that I be clean shaven.

This morning’s shave (a Saturday) was the best one I have performed in many years. My skin looks better than it has in years, and my wife actually commented on how smooth my face felt.