The Teacher Who Grew a Mustache
He's turning the world upside down one follicle at a time
Back in November, he toiled with the idea of facial hair. He toileted it. He was determined to last the whole month without shaving and made it 22 days into the month - like JFK’s 1963 campaign. He made it just long enough to soil any picture of him on his trip to Florida.
In February, some sort of muse rose from the bathroom toilet like Moaning Myrtle and whispered in his ear, reminding him of this: he’s a grower, not a shower. He doesn’t come with a side of shampoo and conditioner, but he does have the ability to grow a mouth toupee.
February is the shortest month, so that one would be the easiest to grow out facial hair for the entire duration of. But, that’s a double-edged sword (as most swords are) as the shortness of growth is conversed by a stifled thickness of the growth.
He quit early again. It wasn’t the itchiness that got him or constant jeering from his peers. No, it was that self-conscious voice that tells every new beard “God, I wish I were follically older than fourteen.” He made it even less time than November, reaching day 21 before rearranging his face - for maybe the better - and coming out to debut a father-like head attached to a dingbat body. His cheeks just refused to come in fully, looking instead like Confucius as opposed to Jim Henson.
February 21st, the day of the precocious shaving, reducing “beard” to a mustache, was a Friday. This teacher had waited until after school and then endured a Saturday and a Sunday with a hamster taped to his upper lip. It really does look like a misplaced unibrow. He took the extra two and a half days (the amount of time of half a school week, technically) to consider: should he keep it? Should he just get rid of it all, even though his boss a few days before had complimented the bearded attempt? Shaving everything would be a slap in the face to a boss who already extended yet unmet desire(s) to take walks around the local nature preserve in warmer weathers.
With the mustache comes great responsibility. It also requires thick skin, not just for the hair to grow through, but to stand up to comparisons to fathers, Mario and Luigi, Rollie Fingers, and Groucho Marx. It also brings in the added pressure of the mustache voice which tells one to dress up like an NBA referee with a ski mask to kidnap a woman and tie her to train tracks in front of the town’s sheriff, yelling “and there’s nothing you can do to stop me, copper!” People expect things from a mustache and its man attached.
February 24th came around and the comments flooded his face. Right to his eyes and mustache, a student said “can I say something about your beard?” and without waiting for a reply continued “I think you shouldn’t have shaved it. It looked better before, I’m sorry.” She wasn’t sorry.
Three other students made statements such as “ah! You have a mustache.” The final boss of a student came when, as he got on the bus to go home, said “have a nice day! And shave that mustache, would ya?!”
Confidence for our protagonist educator could not have been higher. It was just oozing from his head like a shot JFK in Dallas.
It continued with a real boss’ boss saying “I feel like you’re stylish, like you like to set trends” which was answered by the teacher with the explanation that his brother had grown a mustache first, so he was a copycat - whiskers and all. This “trend” was furthered from the brotherly inspiration by the rationalization that the three other male teachers in the room each had beards: one’s is too short, one’s is too patchy, one’s is just right, and now this one’s was a mustache, breaking away from the class standard.
A music teacher said “woah! Nice mustache; very strong, very powerful. I like it!” He was met with effusive smiles and an explanation that it was a new experiment to develop.
A social studies teacher said “did your dad have a mustache? I feel like that’s something I remember him having.” The ‘stache’d teacher could only say “yeah, no, he definitely had one before, too.”
An attractive and young math teacher said “hey, how’s it going?” at lunch. That one was the most benign but felt the best to receive as it ignored the mustache choice, and could have been done so out of attracted respect for the decision. The attractive math teacher is dating someone else…for now; until they become a satellite of this mustache.
A Spanish teacher said “hey, how’s it going?” without speaking Spanish.
Now, on March 3rd, the marcation of one week of schooling the school with this mustache, the teacher was making a statement. That their facial choice was here (or hair) to stay whether that facial baleen was right or wrong to have.
What kind of message does a mustache send to children, to students (age 14-18)? It says that this teacher is someone who can stick to a commitment. A mustache takes a while to grow (for some of us), so that stick-to-it-iveness is something to be passed from mustache to those who must ask to go to the bathroom.
The mustache also tells the students that, yes, the teacher would win in a duel if a disagreement ever came down to it. He would even defeat a beard as beards are headily cumbersome, peripherally getting in the sightline of the holstered pistol. But, a bald face shows more fright than a mustache’d face does when exiting the saloon at high noon. High noon implies the existence of ‘low midnight.’
The mustache is a silent example of the kind of authority a teacher holds over the student. When one thinks of mustaches who does one think of? Earlier, I named a few examples of famous ‘staches, but let’s look at the control that they imply.
Rollie Fingers was a Hall of Fame caliber pitcher, showing that he has complete control of his surroundings, the count and how his ball is going to spin towards the plate. He contends with Al ‘The Mad Hungarian’ Hrabosky for baseball’s best pitching ‘staches.
Mario and Luigi are the main characters in their video game franchise but, more importantly, they are plumbers. Few professions give one immediate and complete control of a household simply upon entering. When a plumber walks in your front door, won’t you do anything they need you to do and don’t you feel awkward wondering whether you have to stick around a minute after showing them the pipe’s location or if it’s time to leave them to their work?
Fathers were another example and they have their own day on the calendar. There’s no ‘Student Day.’
And, finally, I mentioned Groucho Marx. No student in 2025’s high school class knows who Groucho Marx is - so dropping that name implies worldliness unbeheld by the youngsters and un-mustached.
The pussy broom newly found on this teacher’s face allows him to be wrong. Of course, before, he often said “my bad” or “that’s my fault, sorry.” But, the wisdom assumed to be held by this prison pussy invites a returned “no, no, that was me,” even from students who are teacher-proclaimed compulsive liars. Some students are! And it’s tough to tell if they believe themselves, or if they’re thinking “I’m so much smarter than this fucking dollop of shit with his fucking yawning awning.” But, the teacher is allowed to be wrong, assumed to have tried his best with a mustache: an assumption that may not prevail balder faces for some reason which I cannot quite put to words.
The teacher who grew a mustache, who cosplays as Tom Selleck or a darker Sam Elliott, who is tempted to shorten it to a furry fuhrer-length: he is forged in the fires of bullying, he is commanded by the toleration of social anxiety, and he is wealthy in comparisons that stretch from ‘feeling hurting’ strategies to genuine compliments; though, it’s never clear exactly which one is being extended by the offerer thanks to a nagging voice of doubt and reconsideration. Maybe he should follow the students’ advice and shave it off. Maybe he should go along with the music teacher - another man who is able to grow a full beard and owns a house.
A mustache is a resort - it’s for those of us unable to beard ourselves, but still wanting to channel some sort of cast-ability for a spaghetti western. Not to go on about spaghetti, but the mustache is also an excellent place to weave strands of spaghetti to, allowing the noodle to dispatch its sauce for a low midnight snack.
The teacher who grew a mustache is someone who is, as one different (but still bearded) music teacher so eloquently put it, “finding himself” (at age 26). He is on a path of self-discovery untold before in this world. It may even birth a novel in its travels. It certainly will need to be photographed soon and better than above for dating apps which might as well sprout dust from lack of use.
Now that that teacher is reading The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell, he may find a spiritual connection to the author - someone with a famous pencil ‘stache.
(Keep scrolling).
I said “fuhrer",” but I made it this whole post without saying “Hitler” or “Stalin.”
Feel free to buy a coffee if you’re proud of me for that.
Don’t buy a coffee and shoot me a DM if you think I need to shave. (Please don’t show this post to my students or anyone I work with, really).
John, this was exactly the laugh I needed this week. This story got randomly selected for today's podcast from my subscriber chat thread, and I loved it so much. Keep an eye out for the episode at some point today, I can't wait to talk about it, haha.
Hahaha! I got lots of giggles reading it - even from the get-go. Obviously subscribed for more!