Whenever I pull on pantyhose, I think of Ron.  Ron, one of my first serious lovers…what’s he doing now, I wonder?  

Anyway, Ron had a beard, and the reason he had a beard was not so he would look like a pensive professor, which he was, or a disheveled lumberjack, which he was not, but because he was so damn analytical.  And he was afraid of time, its passage, its fleeting nature.  If he’s dead now, and he could well be for all I know, his fear would of course have been justified (he would have laughed if he had heard me say that!).

So one day he threw all his razors away – or rather, frugal guy that he was, asked if I wanted them for my legs and underarms – and announced that he would never shave again.  At five minutes a day, he calculated, over the course of an average American male lifetime, he would have wasted close to 100 days looking in the mirror shaving.  Shaving!  He spit the word with disgust.

How many days have I – will I have – wasted pulling on and peeling off pantyhose?