Except we totally were. And when we walk into the room, all of the guys waiting were like 30. And buff. And fully-bearded. Let me assure you, I am none of those things. I was half-expecting not to have my name called because they'd just assume I was there with my dad or something.
Oddly enough, that's not what made me feel most out of place. That happened when I actually went to the sign-up sheet, and read what it was we were casting for: The Art of Shaving.
To a normal person, this would not be a big deal. But I grow facial hair like a prepubescent girl. You could probably take a random sampling of porn star vaginas, and at least 80% of them would have more hair than my face (100% if you took them before 1980).
To be more precise, here's a picture of Hulk Hogan. The areas circled in red are where I cannot grow facial hair:
I look just as smashing in that outfit though.
I also can't grow anything under my lip, aka the "Soul Patch," aka The Only Hair Left on Howie Mandell's Body:
"And I still have more on my face than you!"
It's not like I was gonna bail or anything, but I also wasn't feeling super confident about getting booked. Meanwhile the other guys seemed to know the casting people already, chatting them up about how long it'd been since they'd seen each other. Which could very well have been while I was still in elementary school.
It's in the middle of thinking of elementary school (fucking Debbie) when they call me up and start to take some photos of me. Pretty standard. Then ask to take my shirt off. Pretty standard. And then ask for me to pretend that the camera is a mirror, and to mime as if I'm shaving. Which, for a shaving and skin care company...pretty standard.
The problem with this, of course, is I don't really know how to shave. Honestly I cut myself shaving just about every time that I'm shaving. Out of 10 shaves, I would say I cut myself a good 5-6 times. If cutting my own face was a batting average, I would be in the fucking Hall of Fame.
It's just that my dad never taught me how to shave. This is not in any way my dad's fault, since I literally did not start growing facial hair until I had moved out of the house. I don't need to say it would've been kind of weird in my first summer after college for my dad to pull me aside and make me watch him shave just to show what it'd look like. Besides, by that point he probably just assumed I had been in some chemical accident with my aunt at the campgrounds or something and would never grow hair like a normal human being.
I attempted to mime regardless, but couldn't help but think that the photographer was scratching me off the list in his head as I tried to fake-lather and fake-shave, and to not mime getting fake-cut since it'd come so naturally.
At the end, they asked me to pretend to inspect myself in the camera-mirror at my close shave. But what I really wanted to do was make the Home Alone face.
And then go home and watch Home Alone.
Because you don't need facial hair for that.
