"When you became such a hippie...."

Early in this holiday season the boys were at my place (I mean Son 1 and Son 2) and one of them referred to the period of time when I moved out of the house as "that time when you started becoming such a hippie." The other said, "I think Dad was only a hippie for a little while and now he is slowly clawing his way back." (I don't remember which was which.)

Several days later I asked them, "What does hippie mean to you, at least in this context?" After all I haven't started wearing love beads or smoking pot (although now that I think about it there was that concert I took them to a few years ago).

They came up with several points:

• My shift to more-vegetarian cooking (though I'm hardly religious about it) 

• My meditation (which I'm still doing, usually just once a week at Sangha)

• "Caring about other people" (I suspect refers to my volunteer work, which I still -- four years later -- do once a week like clockwork except when I am out of town)

• And my neck beard. (Some time after I wrote this post -- in which I admitted to still trimming the edges of my beard -- I decided that for the sake of consistency I really ought to stop shaving altogether. I keep my beard short, but I do not use a razor anywhere. And ever since that day, my boys have given me a bad time about letting the hair on my neck grow.

• They never mentioned the concert.

I asked them about the neck beard, because they have picked on it so often. Specifically I said it is simply not true that only disreputable guys let their neck hairs grow. I instanced a guy at Durmstrang (Son 2's old high school) who keeps a neatly-trimmed beard that covers his neck as well.

Son 2's answer was, "Let's think about this. One of these people lives on a ranch and frequently has to do hard, grimy physical labor fixing things. The other one has a white-collar job in an office. Which one looks right wearing a neck beard?"

OK, maybe he has a point, though I didn't concede it at the time. Gosh, I wonder if this has anything to do with the changes in my job situation? (See, e.g., here, here, here, here, and here.) Actually probably not, but I suppose it might affect my ability to get a new job if my current one peters out. Maybe I should take that possibility seriously instead of just hiding my head in the sand.

Anyway, that's why my boys think I'm a hippie.