I suppose it all started about six weeks ago.  That's when I glanced down and noticed I had a big potato chip crumb caught in my chest hair.

As I nibbled on said crumb (What?  They were Munchos.  Plus, I shower. At least six days a week.) I began to ponder life.  More specifically, my life.  And most specifically, my chest.  Was it growing where I wanted it to grow, or was it out of control?  Did I need to make drastic chest changes?  Was this a sign from above,or simply a result of sloppy eating and rather poor posture?

Who can really say?  It's nebulous.

I'm fully aware it was only last year that I took a vow of shaving abstinence.  But seriously people, food was getting stuck.  And so, with the shirtless summer season upon us, I took the plunge into the metrosexual pool.

I trimmed my chest.   

Just a little!  It was like mowing the lawn down there.  Not even really a full mow, just evening it out a little.  More like hedge trimming.

OK, so maybe I only stuck my toe in the metrosexual pool.

Anyway, now that it's done, I gotta say I kinda like it.  Sure, a few more crumbs may end up on the floor, but I probably needed to vacuum anyway.  I find myself looking down my shirt at random times throughout the day, just checking it out. Which can be a little awkward when someone walks in at work.

Also, as long as I was, uh, in the neighborhood, I went ahead and trimmed my underarm hair, too.  I'm sorry, but it was a bird's nest under there.

Which brings me to my next point.  Or maybe my only point.  And that is, I get tired of all this maintenance.

Ear hair, nose hair, chest hair, underarm hair.  Now I'm sitting here looking at my toe hair.  I guess I'm gonna have to trim that, too. Where does it end?  What is it all for?  Women?

I've seen cavemen on TV.  They get women, and they're not shaving.  Granted, in most of the footage I've seen they hit the woman over the head with their club then drag her back to the cave.  I'm not sure if courts today would view that favorably, but surely there must be another way.

I was watching an old Police Story last night, and David Groh took off his shirt so they could put a wire on him.  It was like a bearskin rug under there.  Man, I would have rocked the seventies!  Chest hair, lava lamps, nobody looking at you funny when you're singing along falsetto to "Stayin' Alive."  I really wouldn't have to change that much.

OK, I've strayed off my topic a bit.  What was my topic again?  Oh, right, how hard it is being a man.

But alas, even as I gripe and wax defiant, I do so having already acquiesced to a degree.

I just hope my chest hair heroes -- the two Tom's, Selleck and Wopat -- aren't too disappointed.

"Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk / I'm a woman's man / No time to talk..."