Nose hairs problem for middle-aged men

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/08/2015 (3896 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If you have ever seen me wandering around the frozen-food aisle at the local supermarket or taken a hard look at the mug shot accompanying this column, you will know I have a deep commitment to personal grooming.

I’m not what you would call a fashion plate and typically look like an unmade bed when I leave the house, but I start every day staring at my puffy face in the mirror to ensure a third arm has not grown out of my forehead overnight.

That’s exactly what I was doing the other morning when, suddenly and without warning, I saw something truly terrifying, by which I mean several long and unruly hairs sprouting from my nasal passages.

What young readers of my particular gender need to know is when you reach my age, the hair on top of your head stops growing, whereas the hairs lurking inside your ears and your nose begin to grow uncontrollably like a weasel on steroids.

I know this sounds disgusting right now, but this biological change has the added benefit of making it possible for bald men to hide their chrome domes via the simple technique of growing their rogue nose and ear hairs until they are the length of firehoses and then combing them over their otherwise-naked skulls.

Laugh your cruel little laughs, but I challenge anyone to come up with a better explanation for why Donald Trump’s comb-over resembles a diseased woodland creature that scampered on top of his head and died.

Anyway, the point is, when I noticed this unfortunate growth in my nasal passages, I attacked it in vain with the only weapon I could find — a pair of my wife’s blunt nail scissors, the ones with tiny curved tips that are so (bad word) dull you couldn’t use them to cut tissue paper, let alone improve your personal hygiene.

Fortunately, the very next day I found myself relaxing in a chair at the hair salon while Marla, the stylist who has cut my hair for the last 20 years, worked her way around my face with an electric trimmer.

When she reached my chin, I grinned sheepishly and said: “Ha ha ha! Maybe you could move that trimmer up a few inches in the general direction of my nostrils.”

Marla instantly recoiled and contorted her face into the sort of pained expression you would wear if your dog had an accident on the living room carpet.

“I DON’T DO NOSES!” she snorted, glaring at me. “I don’t mind trimming ear hairs, but I draw the line at noses.”

Which is when she asked why I was worried about overly long nose hairs now, which I took to mean, in her eyes, I had spent the past 20 years wandering around like a caveman, tripping over the unstylish hairs dangling from my prehistoric nostrils.

But I ignored the insult and told Marla I would resolve the issue by buying some razor-sharp scissors.

“No! You’ll just end up killing yourself!” she declared, giving me a look of scorn mixed with pity. “Hold on, I’ll show you what you need.”

Then she wandered away and returned moments later with a package containing what looked like a high-tech ballpoint pen. “What’s that?” I grunted.

“It’s a battery-powered nose-hair trimmer,” Marla explained. “EVERYONE has one of these.”

I arched my freshly trimmed eyebrows. “Everyone?”

“Yes,” my stylist sniffed, disdainfully. “Everyone!”

Which is how I ended up buying a nose-hair trimmer with three attachments that, according to the instructions, will also trim your ears, sideburns, moustache, eyebrows and, quote, “bikini area.”

When I left the salon, Marla graciously put my new grooming device in a plain brown paper bag to shield it from prying eyes.

What you young guys need to know is this was a turning point in my career as a guy. One moment you are a confident, hip, manly man oozing sex appeal from every pore; and the next moment you are an aging dork, the sort of tragic creature who voluntarily agrees to buy a (bad word) battery-powered nose-hair trimmer.

Growing up, never in a million years did I expect to be the guy who would buy, let alone need, a nose-hair trimmer. I was going to be James Bond, a sexy secret agent, a Tuxedo-clad hunk who would kill villains by stabbing them in the eyeballs with his super-secret, poison-tipped fountain pen.

When my unruly nose hairs and I got home, we unpacked our new toy, inserted a triple-A battery, slapped on the appropriate attachment and bravely took it for a test run in the privacy of our bathroom.

It buzzed like a mosquito, and felt like I’d stuck a miniature weed whacker into my nostrils. In the end, it was totally painless and now the only thing exuding from my nose is sex appeal.

I can’t speak for my hairstylist, but I’ll bet James Bond would be proud.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca