Now, there's a moral to this story. So stay with me for a couple of minutes.
I had just come home from work. My wife and our two boys had just gone to visit their grandpa (my father, and the patriarch in the clan), so I decided I wanted to relax and have an easy meal before having a shower and a shave before getting the rest of today's work done (I'm a teacher, so I usually do some lesson planning or grading of papers in the evenings)
I sat down, had a couple of sandwiches, mindlessly watched some TV, and suddenly I woke up two hours later. I had napped. Involuntarily. For two hours. I was suddenly in a bit of a hurry. I put my silvertip brush in a bowl of hot water, had a quick shower, dabbed my face with a towel, applied a little shaving oil, and lathered up from my Tabac puck. The lather was fine, the skin felt supple. Everything felt alright.
Now, a few months ago I jumped on an Ebay opportunity and bought 100 Feather blades from a vendor in Hong Kong. It was dirt cheap, and shipping was free. Of course, I had a slight suspicion that the blades could be counterfeit, but I thought: "What's the worst thing that can happen? That they're too dull?" Boy, I did not see this coming.
You might start getting the idea, or what?
Well, I unwrapped one of these blades, loaded it in my HD Tech, a combination that has been proven to be very successful when in a bit of a hurry and there's very little time to enjoy the moment.
I started the first pass. WTG, of course. I immediately felt that something wasn't perfect. The shave felt a little rough. Then I started on the thin, rather sensitive skin on the neck. I felt a sting. "A bit too clumsy, I thought". Three small veepers were visible.
I have a sort of a goatee and a stache, which require some precision shaping around the edges. I started with my chin, and removing the hairs went ok, until I suddenly felt a sharp sting. "There must have been an uneven spot", I thought.
Then it was time for the area under and slightly to the side of the nose. I have to change the angle of the razor quite a bit here.
The razor snagged. In my skin. In the middle of a quick, snappy movement. I felt an immediate burn, blood was trickling down over my lips. The lather turned pink. The blade had literally dug into the skin, and scraped it off completely in a small area.
I was now bleeding, although not life-threatingly, from under the nose, the chin and under the jaw. I looked like an extra in a Jean Claude Van Damme-movie. And it hurt like a mudderfudger.
I started frantically rinsing my face with cold water, and the pain got new and more interesting colours. I wiped my face with a new towel. It also looked like something out of a movie. Or possibly like a prop from an episode of "Dexter". There was no way around it.
I had to use the styptic pencil. Generously. I had doubts. I had never had cuts like these, and I doubted that it would work with such profuse bleeding. I wet the tip of the styptic pencil, rubbed it hard directly on the cut by the nose. OK. I'll be honest. The sounds escaping my throat were not very manly. But boy, did it work! I was impressed!
After a few more moments of embarassing agony, the bleeding stopped. But my face was red, irritated, the cuts were visible from a mile away. I used some aloe vera, applied Bulldog AS balm generously and went to my home office.
A few moments later, I could actually feel the skin getting warmer. My cheeks felt tender and hot, almost like I had an allergic reaction.
When my wife came home, she said nothing at first. My 3-year-old son said: "Daddy, did somebody hit you in the face? Hitting in the face is not nice. Not even when it's just for fun". Then he went upstairs to his room. I said to my wife: "Not really the greatest shave." She said mockingly: "Oh, you poor thing. you shouldn't play with sharp objects when you're home alone". My 8 year-old gave me a quick, puzzled look and said "You smell nice, dad".
OK. So here's the moral of the story. Or should I say Lessons Learned:
1. Buying very cheap razor blades is just like buying anything else very cheaply. You get what you pay for. And when the item in question is the sharpes object known to man, designed to glide across your skin, saving a few bucks on them might not be what grants you an automatic membership in MENSA...
2. Styptic pencils are excellent.
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Worst shave ever (SOH)
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