Storytime #18: My Journey of Shaving and Growing A Beard

My journey of shaving and growing a beard was interesting for me.
For my journey of shaving. - It began back in middle school, (Between the late 90s until the beginning of the next century, the 21th century.) I was about 15 years old then, and was curious about things. Anyway, the story of how I begin shaving was... My father had retired from the Atlanta Police Department for 30 years, that he decided to try something new... truck driving. While he was away, I was with my mother in our second home in Lithonia, GA. One day, I want to shave my face for the first time. I was so unsure how to shave well. With a razor, I remember shaving without shaving cream or lotion. After I was finished, I used alcoholic (to prevent cuts.) It turned out okay. Then when I went to high school, sometimes I had to rush to shave an hour or so before my school bus arrived to my house. It was frustrating that I had shave almost every day, until graduation from Stephenson High School. For the past couple of years, I been using Neutrogena products for men.
For my journey of growing a beard. - Before I began my college journey two years later after I graduated from high school in 2005. I had been used to the routine of shaving and wanted to grow a beard of some kind. So I experimented on a few of them. But before that, I remembered when I seen an old picture of my father, back in the day where he was once “tried to have a beard like Teddy Pendergrass.” (I personally was not impressed of it, but I was curious to what kind of beard I want since my father had a beard, back in the day.) When I was 19 or 20 years old, I had just started with a soul patch, for a short while. Then when I went to my first college in 2008, I developed having a chinstrap beard along with a soul patch. And since then, I been having a chinstrap beard with soul patch for years. However, how to maintain it, took some work to figure out. For a while, I used a plastic comb, which later I found out it not good to use for my beard. Then I went on YouTube and found a guy named Brandon Patton a.k.a (also known as) “Ya Boy B.”, who is very good with his health / beauty products for black men on how to manage men’s hair, skin, and beards from his experience, about a year or two ago. I have recently maintain my beard with a wooden comb, trim any split ends and fly aways (every third or fourth week), and use some of  “Ya Boy B.’s My Evan Alexander Grooming products. Also once every month, as I get my haircut, I also ask / remind the barber to trim down my beard because I don’t like it too long after a month of growth. And when I get home within the same week of getting my haircut and beard trimmed down, with help of my mother to color my beard - from gray back into black again.

Here’s a source for Brandon Patton a.k.a (also known as) “Ya Boy B”: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7kKFKme90zilijSwYlvwRQ