Baby Face, Part Two

So, I recently posted an article about how my room mate looks a lot younger than he is. Despite the fact that even when he gets to be fifty he probably won't look much older than thirty, he sees his looks as a handicap. Personally, I don't get it. But it is funny, and so I'm going to write some more about it.

Often times, I think of him like Calvin, of the beloved Bill Watterson comic strip "Calvin and Hobbes". This comparison works well, because I compliment as Hobbes fairly well if I do say so myself.

I'm a little bigger, have more fur, and am lazy like a cat.

My room mate is impulsive, imaginative and incorrigible. That being said, he has aspirations that are bigger than his body (like being LeBron James), he has an odd way of expressing himself at times, and "seems cursed with an unnaturally thin beard".

As often as I rag on him about his inability to cultivate his own beard, every once in a while the tables are turned. One time, his mother and step father stopped by. Upon greeting me, the step father asks if perhaps I've lost any weight recently. I informed him that yes, the two of us had been going to the gym every morning and I had lost a bit of weight. "That's good" he says. "I thought you had. You look a little thinner in the face. More feminine."

Apparently what I looked like that day.

Now, I had a full beard going on at the time. Not like an "I've been shipwrecked on an island for the past three years with no company besides a volley ball" beard, but a solid "I could totally be a hockey player who just happens to have all his teeth intact" amount of facial hair. This was a pretty obvious burn on me.

My room mate immediately runs back into the living room laughing and pointing, probably saying something along the lines of "Awww! Burn!" or "How does it feel asshole?", I'm not really sure. I was still a little in shock. I learned a valuable lesson that day. It hurts to be told you aren't manly. So you should strike first and call the other person feminine.

I'll see you in Hell, baby face!

That being said, back to ripping on my room mate for being the one who normally gets called out for looking like a small child.

One time, my room mate and I were in the library along with three girls. We were in the graduate students study room, which is supposed to be only for graduate students. None of the girls were grad students, and all of us were laughing and carrying on, not exactly what should be going on in study room reserved for serious academic research, or whatever us grad students are supposed to be doing.

According to the internet, we're supposed to be grading papers.

Any way, I see the library security guard walk by the room, glaring at us a little bit. Not wanting to get on the bad side of the library staff, I quickly tell everyone in the room that I just saw the guy walk by, and that we should probably be quiet. I then told everybody that if the security guy comes back, "Everyone act like you're old. Grow beards or something." I turn to my room mate and make as if to console him, or tell him that it's okay if you can't grow a beard.

Insinuating that three undergraduate girls have better odds of growing out a beard than you do as a twenty five year old male could probably be devastating to one's self esteem. But we don't care about that here. All we care about is laughing at, with or about something.

He's a "collie-flower"! That joke slays me!

Next joke on the old/young room mate.

Back in his undergraduate days, he spent an inordinate amount of time at the library. Like, he spent so much time there that he got a chair with his name on a plaque there. When coming back from the library late at night, walking across the darkened campus, sometimes he would be a little bit scared of running into some vagabond criminal or other type of ruff customer.

Get it? "Ruff" as opposed to "Rough"? Dog-gone funny.

In order to combat this potential threat upon his person, he would use a little bit of stage craft to make him appear tougher than he was. What's this you ask? A fake mustache. My room mate would wear a fake mustache so that he would appear creepy and macho. Nobody was going to try and molest him if he looked like he might molest right back. I am not making this up.

Lastly, for Halloween we dressed up as Andy Samberg and Justin Timberlake's characters from the SNL digital short "Dick in a Box". I already had a beard that I could trim down into the correct ridiculous facial hair. My room mate not so much. So we started searching for some fake facial hair to glue onto his face or something.

The right facial hair really makes or breaks the costume.

Every single costume shop was out of fake blond facial hair. Not only had nature conspired against him to prevent him from growing his own, but the retail world had also deemed that he should be without facial hair. We used a sharpie, which actually ended up looking pretty good, especially if the lighting was dim.

Artist's simulation

Hope you've enjoyed this post, and I apologize for the rather overboard usage of photos of dogs. What can I say, it just made me laugh. And that's what it's all about.

Baby Face

One of the key differences between my room mate and myself is the ability to grow facial hair. One of us is blessed with the beard growing capability of a lumberjack while the other will probably keep his boyish good looks until he's fifty. All this despite the fact that my room mate is three years older than I am. The fact that he looks very young for being one of the oldest people I hang out with is another of the running jokes that provide us (mostly me) with constant amusement.

Baby faced, but with an old soul.

Here are a few anecdotes revolving around the paradox of Old/Young Room Mate.

My room mate is currently twenty five and a half years old, but looks like one of those actors who portray unrealistically mature and attractive high school students on television. This creates problems for him at times.

This dude was twenty four years old, playing a senior in high school.

About a year or so ago, he was out on a date with an older woman. And by older woman, I mean she was like 26 or something. Not a huge difference, but she was hesitant about going out with somebody younger than her. He tried to convince her that it wasn't that big a deal. And it almost worked, until they got to the movie theater.

They went to see an R-rated movie, not sure which one, but it really doesn't matter. The ticket attendant said, "Can I see your I.D. please?" Thinking that she meant his student I.D. for the student discount he handed it to her. She was like, "No. Your driver's license." He wasn't able to convince a ticket attendant that he was at least seventeen years old.

He goes by one name, like Madonna. Or Seal.

Next story.

We went back to Raleigh for a First Friday event one time, and it was just another chance for him to be picked on. There was him, me and a friend of his. Both the friend and I have some facial hair. As we went into a bar, the friend and I went in no problem. Guess who got carded. Not us.

Then as we walked around downtown, we ran into a few frat boys, probably twenty, maybe twenty two. Pink polo T-shirts and everything. They were drunk. My room mate was wearing a small back pack with some extra bike parts. Seeing this, the frat boys were like, "Is there alcohol in that back pack?" My room mate replied that no, there was none.

Who's got two thumbs and is a douche bag? This guy!

Frat boys immediately yell, "Freshman!" and proceed to tell us where we can get some alcohol. My room mate then attempted to explain that he was actually a second year graduate student, and older than they were.

Frat boys' response? "It's okay man, we were freshman once too. It happens to everybody."

After this stunning verbal riposte, they shamble off, probably to enlighten more people on where you can procure alcohol underage.

Yeah!

Back in the fall, my room mate got a letter from the AARP in the mail, filled out to his name. For those of you who don't know, you have to be at least fifty years old to get membership in the AARP.

"Alien" came out three decades ago.

As much as I wish that I had signed him up for this, I did not. Whoever did though, has a place in my heart.

He used to take Centrum Performance vitamins. Now, whenever I hear Centrum, I think of the Centrum Silver vitamins. Old people jokes ensue. Then, they took the ginkgo out of the Performance brand, the main reason why he took them. Because he has bad memory, like an old person. He had to switch to Centrum 50+.

Next stop: Poligrip discount coupons.