A CLOSE SHAVE

Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do. - Anonymous

I was driving along the freeway heading to a meeting yesterday when I happened to glance over at the guy in the car next to mine. We were both traveling at 60 miles per hour in fairly heavy traffic.

He was shaving.

Not with an electric razor. He was shaving with a blade. He was dry shaving at 60 miles per hour on an eight-lane freeway at 2 o’clock in the afternoon.

Coupla thoughts...

First off, if you’ve made it to two o’clock in the afternoon without shaving, why bother? Take the rest of the day off.

Second...dry shaving is, well, tricky even when you are standing in front of your bathroom mirror, let alone when you are driving at freeway speeds in a Jaguar sedan.

Third, where do the whiskers go?

And get this... This morning as I was getting ready for the radio show, I came across a survey that found almost all of us do things we probably shouldn’t do when we drive. My thing is talking on the phone. My car is more of a mobile phone booth than a mode of transportation. I get in the car and generally dial a number even before I pull the shift lever into drive. I get more done behind the wheel than most people do at the office. My wife even bought me a Blue Tooth thingy so I could talk hands free. I haven’t been able to make it work, but I put it in my ear anyway just to look cool.

(By the way, why do they call it a “blue tooth?” You stick it in your ear. Perhaps if you stuck it in your mouth... Why would you put a tooth of any color in your ear? What’s with the body part moniker? Why not a blue kidney or a blue spleen? “Hey, I hate to be the one to tell you, but you have a spleen stuck in your ear. It’s blue. You might want to remove that.”)

Anyway, the survey I read said seventy-three percent of people talk on the phone when they drive, so I have a lot of company. Sixty-eight percent of people say they eat when they drive. I don’t do that. 19% fix their hair. I don’t have enough hair to fix. There’s no fixing what’s left. And get this... 2% shave. Jaguar guy is not the only one.

So go ahead and shave.

But remember, while it takes around 8,000 bolts to hold together an automobile, it takes just one nut to scatter it all over the road.


(To send Brad an email: click on his photo at the top right of this web page and then click “email.”)