Do you remember your first shave?

[ksblazer]

I thought I would ask this question as it takes me down memory lane.
oud of
It contained a plastic razor with no blade of course, a small shot sized cup with a handle for my cream, a little tiny plastic bristle brush. Boy was I excited (kinda like Ralphie when he got his Red Rider BB gun) and couldn't wait until Dad jumped in the bathroom to shave!!

When the time came. I jumped up on the foot stool besides Dad. He filled up my little cup with some canned Barbersol and I brushed it all over my face. Dad did the same thing, but he had no cup and brush. He just put his Barborsol on by hand. We both broke out out razors (Dad used a cartridge razor) and I shaved that cream away. When we were both finished shaving dad walked over to a shelf in the bathroom and pulled down this bottle of green liquid and put some on his hands and rubbed it on my face. That stuff smelled great!! Dad said it was called Skin Bracer.

Well after that I felt like a million bucks and my manliness was through the roof!! I went running out of that bathroom to find Mom. She was in the living sitting on the couch. I told her all about this great shaving experience I just had and made her smell the aftershave I was wearing. She said she was proud of me, I smelled great!! And the ladies would be swarming me when I left the house.

I think Dad even has an old picture of me standing on that stool shaving in the bathroom. It was always a fun experience to shave and put on some of that good smelling aftershave. I also found out that Dad had other kinds of aftershaves too. He turned me onto Old Spice, Brute and Aqua Velva. Then later on Mom gave me some Avon musk, so I would have my own aftershave and stay away from Dads.

 

[MrLara]

i was 12, my mom bought me some edge gel and a wilkinson sword 2 blade cart. i lathered a bit and put some on my face. I did one pass wtg. rinsed my face and put on some of my uncles green brut (bad idea) it burned like heck. i had seen a few of my uncles shave before, so i pretty much taught myself. Sure wish i still had that wilkinson though.

 

[Sir Lurkalot]

I don't really remember but I think I may have been 17 and used an Atra or Trac II. I know it was definitely not a DE.

 

[jansob]

It was an electric, I think a Remington. I used 'lectric shave and Aqua Velva. Felt all growed-up. Unfortunately it was after my dad passed away. He was an injector man, so I'd probably have been wetshaving from the beginning had I learned from him.

 

[Snuff-Belgium]

I often watched my grandpa shave with his mug, shave stick, brush and DE. I had my first shave at age 14 with the same tools and been doing it ever since and hopefully for many more years to come.

 

[Jcabbage]

I was about 15 or so and had a dirty upper lip. I think I asked my mom to ask my dad to show me how to shave. I think it was with some gillette foam and a sensor, what my dad still uses.. was a fine experience but wasn't a huge bonding experience from what I remember. But I did feel better without the dirty 15 year old mustache. 11 years have passes so quickly.

 

[Redstickjohn]

I was 12. My mother made the comment that I really needed to start shaving, as the hair on my lip and sideburns was getting pretty long. Dad took me into his bathroom, and gave me his Fatboy, blue blades, his Old Spice mug and brush, a can of Foamy, and a bottle each of Old Spice and Seaforth AS. He had gone exclusively to electrics and skin bracer. I do remember my first time--really just knocking off the peach fuzz, and I did manage to cut myself pretty good at the sideburn line. I splashed on the Old Spice, and remember thinking how "old man" it smelled. Soon after I was gifted some English Leather--now ya talkin'.

 

[Lexbomb]

I don't remember my first shave but my first DE shave was with a 33C an AOS badger and TOBS lemon lime

 

[McJAGGER]

I have no recollection. I wish I did.

 

[Mad Man]

First shave I took a chunk out of my top lip with my gramps tech - I was 13 and it was the early '80s.

Didn't touch a DE until 2011. Ball-end tech, EJ BBB and a puck of Sea Buckthorn. 3 passes. No weepers. Proraso AS to finish.

I was a smug bugger all day.

 

[Useless shaver]

Great thread!

Don't remember actually my first real shave.

I remember I had a kind of three-piece DE razor, in plastic, with cardboard blue blades! Great toy! I smeared some of the shaving cream (was with the razor, Lea) all over my face (no brush, no water...) and tried to shave. I was about nine yo.

I must have got rid of that dirty upper lip around 14-15 yo. With an electric, I'm afraid, Dad then used. He only used cream, brush and a Schick on Sundays. Plus an old-man cologne (Varón Dandy) as an aftershave (yup, what a skin he had!!! He'd laugh at me if I showed some neck irritation now!). Great smell!!!

 

[brucea]

My first shave was with an electric my well meaning parents bought me. It was terrible. I tried williams electric shave etc. It was still no good. Switched to whatever cartridge system was used at the time. Happily I am now using my DE and SE razors ,which is what I remember my father using, and getting the best shaves of my life.

 

[Shutterbug57]

Not much of a memory as shaving was more of a chore than a right of passage in our house. I know it was an adjustable DE and there was a brush involved. I was 16 and full of testosterone, so I had to open the adjustment to the highest setting because I was a real man. Well between that and a watery, soapy gruel (not a lather, nobody showed me how to make a lather) that I slathered on my face, it was a blood bath. My dad was not much help as he would routinely emerge from his shaves with bits of TP stuck all over his face. It wasn't that he did not want to teach me, but he did not have good technique either. Heck, I looked like his star pupil.

After that, I jumped to carts and cans pretty quickly and tossed the offending, then worthless (now probably worth $50) razor in the trash and moved on.

 

[Shaving_CHENG]

Absolutely! Atra, English Leather Foam and Aftershave with my older brother and father. I was 11 and the black peach fuzz was more than either of them could handle any more.

 

[ksblazer]

Thanks for the replys guys, I enjoyed reading them all.

Okay so now here is how my first real shave went. I must have been about 15 or 16yo. One of the kids I went to school with asked me when I'm going to shave that peach fuzz off my face. So that weekend I found an old razor that Dad didn't use anymore under the sink and luckily the cartriges he used still fit it. Lathered up with the Barborsol Aloe vera and sliced the heck out of me in a few of differnt places. Cheek, neck and throat. And like Shutterbug57 I had TP all over my face when I left the bathroom. About a week later it was my birthday and my parents gifted me an electric razor.

 

[Graybeard57]

Brother, do I! At the edges of my upper lip I discovered some darkened fuzz. Realizing I was now a man, I squirted a bucketful of my Dad's shaving cream into my hand and all over the sink, carefully applied it to my upper lip, grabbed his Gillette Slim, and cut myself horribly on my upper lip, especially at the corners of my mouth. When my parents saw me, they realized what I'd done, and my mother picked me up a Gillette Techmatic the next time she went shopping.

Aah, yes, I remember it all too well. That put me off DE for about 40 years, when last May I gave it another try. My technique had improved in the interim.

 

[heybatter]

I have no recollection. I wish I did.

+1

 

[jaredsmith83]

My first kiddie shave was similar to one above, where dad lathered me up with his brush and gave me his Gillette Trac II (without the blade) and said to get all the cream off. It was super cool! Dad had a drug store boar brush, but I remember it being amazingly soft. His shaving soap was in a mug with an old Model T car on it. I felt like a man! He splashed some Old Spice on my face and told me to go show my mom how good I looked! I actually found the mug and brush around Christmas and left it out on the bathroom sink at my parents house, as a bit of a hint for him to start using it again.

My first "real" shave was somewhere around the time I was 15. I had just got home from basketball practice and noticed that the fuzz on my upper lip was looking weird. You remember the teenage mustaches. Bits of wires poking out all over, some with color, some still blond. So I took the bar of soap from the shower and rubbed it on my lip and used that same old Gillette from years before to cut it off. I remember leaving bits here and there all over my face, which of course led to Dad showing me what to do. For my birthday that year I got a new razor, which I believe was a Gillette Sensor. That was right about the time the Edge gel was becoming a big thing, so that appealed to me quite a bit.

And my first wet shave was in October. Loaded up the VHD boar with some VDH luxury soap, put the 64 Gillette SS to work with a personna blade and haven't looked back!

 

[eth]

Braun electric with some lubrication stuff. A very uninteresting experience, both then and now.

 

[euro]

My first shave. Once when I was 14 I went to the barber, after I got a haircut he did the contours of my sideburns. As a young teenager you will have some hair on your cheeks. So on me it looked half half, because the barber didn't want to shave the rest of for that you need to pay extra. So when I went home I looked in the mirror and I saw how ridiculous I looked like so I went to the bathroom grabbed my brothers Gillette Mach 3 and mowed the rest down without any facial preparations or shaving cream/soap. So you can imagine how red my face used to look like, after a while I got many ingrown hairs, redness etc. My parents didn't knew about it till my brother found out I have been using his expensive Gillette carts. My old man decided to go to the market and get me some shaving supplies. He told me that a DE system is WAAAAAY better compared to any modern razor which uses multiple blades. I refused so he got me a Trac2 like razor with the carts. I didn't like it so I got myself a M3. Now I really wish I listened to my old man and took his advice about the DE wet shaving. If I ever would have a son I really would let him experience what I have missed in my life, the father-son first shave moment (and of course telling him how great DE shaving is).