I have a hole in my beard. A bald spot to be precise; located right below what is colloquially known as the “soul patch” and in the center of what should be a pretty solid beard, a little wispy on the sideburns and cheekbones, sure, but a solid beard. I have this bald spot because of a biking/roller-blading/skateboarding/walking-in-a-straight-line-while-being-too-gangly accident that occurred when I was about eleven or twelve. When it happened it didn’t seem out of the ordinary, I got up, my mom washed it out with hydrogen peroxide and I went along with my regularly scheduled programming. My friends probably made fun of me for having a silver-dollar-sized scab on my face, but that was par for my particular adolescent course; had I not fallen (literally) on my face they likely would have found other ammo to use in a (hopefully) friendly rib-fest, e.g. my general nerdiness, an inability to dribble a basketball with even marginal competency, etc., etc. Javen Weston, from about age 10-18 had plenty of character quirks to be exploited by friend and foe alike.

I often bring up this particular bald-spot/scar and the story behind it to people whenever conversations veer into even the most peripheral of topics: my face, my beard, beards in general, scars, hair, the Boston Red Sox, the NHL playoffs, that one line in Billy Madison about Grizzly Adams, etc. I do this because it’s on my face, and even though we are told in school that looks don’t matter (a statement I agree with, in principle) our faces do matter. They travel with us always, we cannot escape them with the uncountable number of reflective surfaces strewn about the modern landscape. We may say that our looks are not important to us, but when almost all of us have to look at our own faces at some point of every single day that we are alive, it is hard for me to believe that our reflections don’t matter at least just a little bit. And I always notice this scar. I don’t notice it because it reminds of a painful experience from childhood because I cannot recall the specifics of the incident any more than I can recall a any particular instance of the near-infinite number of times I have stubbed my big toe. I don’t notice it because I remember the ridicule of friends or classmates, I have plenty of those memories and this one is nowhere even close to getting on my Mount Rushmore of Embarrassing Life Experiences. I notice this scar because I didn’t even know it was there until I reached facial-hair-growing age. The wound healed up perfectly after the scab fell off you couldn’t even tell it was there. But once I reached an age where I could no longer count the number of hairs on my chin in under 2 minutes, there it was, like the patch of bare ground surrounding a big oak tree. I notice this scar because it’s more than just a scar to me, it’s a constant reminder about all of the experiences of my childhood that fundamentally molded who I am, but didn’t make their true nature known until I was (at least) far into my twenties; a reminder of the countless other events that I won’t appreciate until my thirties, forties, fifties,…and the ones that I will never appreciate because they have been lost forever from my memory’s grasp. And I look at a metaphorical representation of that loss every morning.