Growing my MO

By Scott Beveridge

This morning, for a split second, I didn't recognize myself in the mirror when I went to the bathroom sink to shave my face.

No. I'm not in the early stages of dementia. Yet.

There are two week's worth of mustache growing under my nose for the first time since I was 18 years old and sprouted peach fuzz there in hopes of looking older than puberty to my college dorm mates.

As a disguise after that one grew in, I used a tiny brush daily to color it brown mustache wax because it grew in a shade about a bleached blonde as Marilyn Monroe's locks and the hair on top of my head was dark brown.

          Dad and me with a Mo in 1975

At some point I even tried coloring it with Clairol only to unfortunately discover that the hair dye formula in the 1970s burned my sensitive skin, lips and nostrils.

Sometime in my early 20s I removed what had become a nicotine-and-coffee-stained bush from above my lips and, until Nov. 3, have since been a relatively clean-shaven man.

That Saturday this month I challenged myself to join Movember, a global male bonding experience every November when dudes grow mustaches to raise money for men's cancer research. You might call it the guy version of the Pink Ribbon Campaign.

For reasons that are not important here, I am not going ask my friends and acquaintances and strangers to create a Movember account to support my "team."

Instead, come December 1, I am going to make them each give me a dollar for making it through the month with hair tickling my lower lip, and then match the donations up to $100 to send directly to the Prostate Cancer Foundation.

The money will be given in memory of my pal Tom Sypula, a WTAE cameraman who put up a good fight against a male form of cancer before suffering a fatal heart attack nearly two years ago while reporting spot news in Washington County.

What happens to my new mustache after Nov. 30 is yet to be determined.