Charles Dickens' Beard

How did Charles Dickens' beard end up in my garbage can? How did the author of the English language's most beloved novels appear to regress in age from a venerable bearded icon to a clean shaven youth? How indeed...

First of all, there is no need to clarify that I am not speaking literally about the long dead real Charles Dickens - my astute readers would already have come to that conclusion. No - I am referring to a small replica of him that used to hang in the kitchen and now hangs in my bedroom. OK - let's be honest and call it a doll, although "finger puppet" is the correct term if one must be precise.

I have had my Charles Dickens puppet for a few years now - he was a Christmas gift and I have often admired him as he gazed down from above the kitchen window. After recently relocating him to my bedroom I couldn't help but feel that something about him had changed - was it my imagination or was Charles actually looking younger and more dapper? Had he lost some weight?

A few weeks ago I noticed a small reddish brown object on my bedroom floor - it looked like a piece of cloth, maybe a piece of lint from the laundry basket?  I basically ignored it and assumed it would get swept up or vacuumed - eventually.

Then a few days later I saw it again in the hallway outside the bathroom door - sort of kicked it aside wondering again what it could be. Apparently Julie had also been seeing this little bit of flotsam and assumed it was something of mine - just like I assumed it was something of hers.

Not that we are complete slobs but both of us kept seeing this little thing around the house for what seemed like weeks... it seemed to be more than just a piece of trash so that is why I think we both left it alone.

Finally I could take it no more and asked Julie "What is that little brown piece of stuff that keeps hanging around?" She of course was just about to ask me the same thing so I finally picked it up and put it on my dresser because it still looked like it might be something. But neither of us knew what...

After moving it around my dresser and getting increasingly annoyed with it - at this point it looked more like a cloth bread bag tab than anything else, I finally decided to throw it out. So into the garbage it went and I never gave it another thought.

That is until about a week later when I happened to be looking at Charles in his new location just above my bedroom window and suddenly realized why he looked so much younger and trimmer than his usual self.  He had no beard! Then it suddenly struck me what that strange shaped little piece of cloth was all that time - it was Charles Dickens' beard!  It obviously had come off when I moved him.

I wondered what I could do to restore him to his former bearded self and was considering using a felt marker to draw him a beard or gluing some yarn on his chin. That was when I remembered that I had so callously thrown his beard in the garbage.  Now once again I must insist that we are not the most fastidious when it comes to house cleaning but I knew I had thrown that little beard out and something told me it just might still be in the bathroom wastebasket.

So to make a long story even more disgusting I decided to dig down to the bottom of that overflowing receptacle, past the wadded up Kleenex, empty toilet rolls and used Q-Tips. But my search was not in vain - and there at the bottom was that now familiar little piece of cloth that suddenly looked exactly like what it was - Charles Dickens' beard.

I still have it on the shelf in my room and have every intention of gluing it back on - hopefully that will happen before spring cleaning comes along - I don't want to go through this all again. Now where did I put that glue gun...