Bristles

    The reason I don't wear a beard is because the bristles that grow just to the south of either end of my mouth are so painful. I realize that you can shave part of your face when wearing a beard, but the damned things are painful unless they're shaved off completely, and I tend to have difficulty doing that as a surgical operation on a tiny part of my face. (I'm not so good at taking off the middle eyebrow, either.) So I just shave everything and make that area an especial focus.
    I mention it not because I think there are millions out there wondering why I don't grow a beard, but rather because I'm bewildered why we would have evolved that way. What is the point of having painful bristles right at the corners of your mouth? We went tens of thousands of years before shaving came about (or millions if you widen your definition of who "we" are). The only thing that makes sense is that my thinking doesn't make sense: in other words, we only developed the sensitivity to having bristles there when we started shaving the bristles off. However, whenever I've grown a beard, the sensitivity never went away. Granted, I never wore a beard for longer than maybe six months, but that seems a fairly long time. Perhaps it'll just have to be one of life's little mysteries. Or maybe I should ask somebody who's worn a beard for longer than six months. Or I could wait until they bring back the Neanderthals.