SHAVING PERSISTENT STUBBLES: A COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS

Last Sunday morning while shaving my face I noticed that a few stubbles over the upper lip were still noticeable. I passed my electric razor over them twice again but they proved quite stubborn.  I again tried to mow them down, this time changing the direction of attack, instead of usual side to side I used up and down. This time I managed to get most of them down but about three or four were still keeping their head above the parapet. I cleaned the cutting head of the razor and tried again, this time with rotary motion, clockwise alternating with anticlockwise. This finally worked and my upper lip skin was sore! I spent more than twice the time on removing the few tiny stubbles than what I usually take to do the whole shaving.

How come I never noticed these unruly hair shafts before? It puzzled me. Pondering on this mystery I turned the shower on and started to put the shampoo on my hair.  The divine revelation suddenly came literally crashing on the shower tray in front of me. I had the reading glasses on! These were my work glasses which I only used for close dermatological examination and micro-surgery. They are almost a mini-microscope. I was wearing them earlier to read the calorie and fat information on a packet of crisps. The food companies use the tiniest possible fonts known to mankind. My usual reading glasses are not up to that task. I wonder whether these multinational companies are trying to save a few pennies on ink or trying to hide their list of lethal additives. Anyway I will muse on this in another blog. I am happy for now that the immediate quandary is unravelled.

I do not need to spend that much extra time on getting rid of few stubbles which I cannot see in the mirror without these microscope-glasses and even more importantly my wife cannot see. In a perfect world I would like to invest more time and energy to get rid of these but on close cost-benefit analysis I do not think it is justified. Few years or should I say few decades ago when I had abundance of energy I would have tackled this unruly hairs mercilessly but not now.

The recent slowing of economy has lead to diminished government revenues. It has imposed the dreaded cost benefit analysis in everything from army to policing and health to education. The acceptable number of stubbles is getting alarmingly larger. I sincerely hope that the society and the government choose them with due care and diligence.