Father & Son - Which one is the OLD David?

Not that I am happy smearing shoe polish or noxious poisons or Just-For-Men semi-liquid slop on my beard to give the illusion that I'm younger than I am, but I do it anyway hoping that the permanent dyes do not soak into my aging skin and disrupt the cellular homeostasis of my liver or pancreas or prostate gland or kidney or bladder or brain.....  

Here my son who is a quarter century younger than his father shows that even with very little scalp hair that is peppered with grey, the beard is flowing full of that distracting color to make you wonder.  Still a young face with few creases or wrinkles that would add to the argument of his age, he has little to worry about at least for the next decade.  And if he is so lucky to have inherited the Mediterranean skin genes from my side of the family, his skin will age slower than if those genes came from his mother's side  - so maybe he doesn't have to worry for two decades. 

But then again, I seem more interested in my son's aging then he undoubtably is.  Nothing is more disheartening that people thinking you look older than you are.  And nothing is more satisfying that being guessed at a younger age than you are.  They say what's inside is what really matters but I find that when I'm tired, and feeling old, and what I see in the mirror lends credence to that observation, I feel even older and more tired.  

A few years back, a wise Obstetrician friend of mine taught me this.  My beard was almost totally grey and I was happy for the most part, but he suggested that I would feel younger if I dyed my beard to match my scalp hair.  I thought what he said was silly, but I was wrong and he was right.  

One day when I'm really broken, when my feet look like radiation deformed stumps, when the injuries in my ankles, knees, groin, hips, etc make me hunch over trying to keep balance with my walker, when my brain encounters new discoveries every day having forgotten yesterday as if it had not happened, I will finally forget to paint my beard.  

When that happens I will FedEx the remaining 38 tubes of Just-For-Men beard dye to my son to preserve the legacy.....that is provided I remember to do so.