I grew a mustache about 30 years ago, and then added a goatee maybe 15 or 20 years ago and except for a few years here and there, it’s staying. My daughter won’t let me shave now.
Oh, about down to here. (holding flat hand an inch below chin)
Seriously, though, I’ve had the goatee about fifteen years. It was part of a bargain I made with an old girlfriend. I grew it for her, she shaved something off for me.
I had a beard for 20 years. The first 6 years it was bushy. Then I started neatly trimming it and shaving around the edges after starting my career.
Shaved it off after it began to gray. I didn’t want to look ten years older than my real age. I’ve been clean shaved for twelve years. It would be almost all gray if I grew it again.
Grew a moustache in 1980, full beard in 87, went to a goatee around 2003 then clean shaven about two years after that.
Grew back the chin whiskers and moustache last November, cultivated a handlebar moustache which is freaking awesome, have begun using dye because my Wife is too young to be hanging out with Colonel Sanders.
I’ve only been completely clean-shaven three or four times since I first started cultivating my facial hair, which was in late high school. One of those times was before a somewhat major surgery and they requested that I shave to make things easier for the intubation. The other two times were when I shaved my head for Locks of Love.
I’ve had a beard, sideburns or a moustache on and off a dozen times since I was about 18. Clean shaven now though.
I’ve never had facial hair. Well, I’ve had it just long enough to know I can’t ever have facial hair. :eek: So I shave errday. 
I just had the bright idea to go through Straight Dope Message Board Portrait Gallery and count the number of Facial Hair types versus the clean shaven ones. Still not a scientific study but probably a better clue to the percentage I speculated about a few post ago…
Has anybody already done such a thing?
Tried to grow a beard for the first time when I was 26. Came in blaze orange even though the hair on top of my head is a medium brown. Took perhaps another 5-6 years before it grew in darker, and was very salt-and-pepper even in my mid-30’s.
Now of course, at age 53, it’s mostly white, with some dark, some red, some… color out of space.
Get it off me, please! It talks to me in my sleep!
I share you pain! I had a friend with coal-black hair whose beard was flaming red! I suggested he do what Shel Silverstein must have done: keep the beard, shave the head. Remember Shel?
50 years. It will be 51 by Xmas. For a couple years I trimmed it around the cheek, but eventually stopped that and have not touched a razor in over 45. My kids have never seen me clean-shaven.
I have had a beard continuously since 2001. Sometimes it is rather shaggy, at other times trimmed back a bit, but I have not shaved it completely off for the last twelve years.
I’ve had a beard for 30+ years and finally went completely clean shaven in March when I played The Monster in a local production of Young Frankenstein.
Until then, neither my wife or kids had seen me clean-shaven.
I took it off in stages… shaving my cheeks to leave me with a full mustache and goatee for a few days. Then shaving my chin leaving me with a Hulk-Hogan-type mustache for a few days. Then knocking the ends off the mustache so that it only was on my upper lip for a while. Then finally shaving it off completely.
The surprising thing was the sensation of a wave of heat rising over my face. It seems that my own body heat, escaping from the neck of my tee-shirt, was causing it.
I like the buffer-zone-of-time you get if you dribble some liquid out your mouth–an extra few seconds to get the napkin. No beard, straight to the shirt.
^ I hope you got pix of the stages of un-hirsute-ness.
Since menopause…
In college I did a dramatic face plant when I wiped out on my bike. I ended up with stitches between my mouth and nose as well as on one side on my chin.
I had to let my facial hair grow as I couldn’t shave around the stitches and it would have looked idiotic shaving everything but this sort of half goatee. And so let it grow.
It’s been more than 25 years now but I just trim things back every couple weeks and tidy up my neck line daily.
You had the Hitler?
I’ve had facial hair since I started college, in September 1963.
(In wasn’t allowed in High School.)
It took me 30 years to grow my first goatee and I’ve kept it since then. I’m 44 now.
It is about 2" long now. In the past it has been down to my bellybutton. My hair at that time was about 3" below my shoulders. Now, my hair is at most 2" long usually it is 0.5" long. I am due for a haircut. I like the low maintenance of this style. It also looks good on me.
In my late teens, I just quit shaving. It took too much time & energy. It also made my face sting! My senior year in HS, I had a full beard & mustache. I have only shaved for two, six week periods since then.
My boys do not recall seeing me without the beard. Aside from the aforementioned six week periods, I have had “facial hair” for almost 40 years now.