Razor blades. When I was a kid we had razor blades around the house. Of course, for shaving...more on that later. But also for scraping stuff off the floors or windows. Another use: splicing audio tape together. Now, just about everything is digitized. In fact, I'm pretty sure, when KMBC moves into the new building, they are planning to use a digital version of a certain morning weatherman. But, back in the olden days, when people said things like "olden," you could take one of those big spools of audio tape and, using a razor blade, make it sound like Captain Kangaroo actually told your big brother he had "moose breath and a head full of ping pong balls now, please, change your green jeans." Those were the days.

But, mostly, razor blades were used for shaving. They came in cool little futuristic containers. Even the razor was neat...it opened like the doors on a tiny DeLorean. It was a sharp edge! There was an element of danger! Now, with the quintuple blade technology, automatically dispensing industrial strength aloe, as needed, you can't hardly get a nick. All over America there are Styptic pencils using themselves to write down the phone number Sally Struthers is giving out so they can learn some other trade. Half the fun of watching my older brothers shave for the first time was seeing them walk out of the one and only bathroom with toilet paper stuck all over their faces...trying to stop the bleeding. They looked like chickens in mid-molt. Sure, there were electric razors but, as soon as it became clear that you really couldn't use them for sledding down a hill like Santa in the TV commercial, I lost interest.

Like many, if not most, little boys of my generation, I would occasionally stand at the sink and pretend to shave using an empty razor, dreaming of the day I could actually grow a real whisker. I've never had a particularly heavy beard. I didn't need to shave everyday in high school like some kids. One of my friends woke up on his thirteenth birthday looking like a yeti, for example. I don't remember our dad ever having much in the facial hair department. Although, as I've mentioned before, he had more hair on his chin than his shin. He had the skinniest, whitest, hairlessiest legs known to humankind. When he'd stretch out on a lounge chair in shorts, his legs looked like string cheese wearing a babushka.

My oldest brother had a beard for awhile. He may have been in the witness protection program at the time or at least his upper lip was. Another brother had a mustache for a long time. He played the trumpet and, perhaps, thought it made him look like Herb Alpert. Or, maybe, the hair protected his embouchure, which either has something to do with a horn player's facial muscles or is that tangy cheese spread I like on saltines. The other brother also had a mustache for a little while...he resembled a young Wilfrid Brimley. I never have had much luck even considering such facial hair growth. In fact, it's only been in the last few years that, if I skip a few days of shaving, I can make out what would, possibly...on a good day...be a beard. It's really more of an outline...as though Orson Welles' beard jumped from his face and the authorities drew that chalk line around it before hauling it to the hair morgue. Naturally, it appears, it would come in mostly white and gray. I finally reach a point where I could go through my mid-life crisis by growing a beard and I wind up looking like Kris Kringle.

At this point, our older sons have started down the long and shaggy road. They don't shave as often as I think they should. Our oldest son, Alex, appeared to be letting the hair under his nose grow on purpose. I tried to explain that what he had there were not really whiskers. More like peach fuzz on steroids. He and his brother are at the age where the pseudo-growth is pretty spotty. Like our front lawn. They don't have five o'clock shadows...more like, oh, about a quarter to three. They can use the Aqua but don't quite need the Velva.

If I could find an old-fashioned razor with the old-fashioned blades, I'd show them what it really means to shave...and bleed...like a man.