This post was originally posted on my personal blog. I promise original content here in the near future!

If you’re not familiar with shaving your face, which I’d expect some of you may not be, let me tell you that it’s one of the most tedious aspects of being a man.

I realize that might come very close to stating that life as a male is pretty easy, but let’s not forget that we do have to navigate the intricacies of you women once we’re done shortening the hair on our chinny chin chin. We still have to figure out what it is you want to hear when you ask us questions we think we know the answer to.

That being said, shaving is a pain in the butt, but in college I was lucky enough to get a free Gillette Mach 3 Razor and the course of my shaving woes was forever changed.

I think Gillette (warning: do not click that link unless you LOVE Flash) may have given every single adolescent male a free Mach 3 Razor ten years ago because they knew that these things were the crack cocaine of shaving. I mean, one day your sliding a disposable razor across your chin and then next day you’re wiping the hair off your face with a soft laundered cloth that happens to have three razors built into it. Gillette probably doesn’t want you to know this, but you didn’t even need shaving cream anymore.

The thing was perfect. I think you could actually ask your facial hair to go away if you owned one.

Now granted, for the next ten years I was begrudgingly buying replacement blades which cost more than the outfit I’d put on after shaving, but that razor lasted me ten years, no joke. It lasted four dob kits (where does that word come from, anyway?) and five residences. Every girl I have kissed since freshman year in college reaped the benefit of that razor.

Until it disappeared on me about two months ago and I went through the same thing I went though when I stopped playing competitive soccer and my cleats wore out. The Do Not Replace Syndrome that’s founded in something you’ve taken for granted for longer than you can remember. Do people BUY razors these days? Once free, always free, no?

And please don’t tell me people are falling for the FUSION. Five blades is totally ridiculous.

So here I am, pushing thirty years old and in an all out battle with facial hair without a suitable weapon. I am not joking when I tell you that I was commuting home today on a bus, thinking that although I really haven’t blatantly asked for anything from the Gods of Blog, and I really haven’t received anything in return (besides some effing awesome new friends, sidenote), if they gave me one wish I think I might wish for a Mach 3 Razor.

At which point I realized that my aspirations could probably be raised.