"Is that what happens when you don't shave for a day?" my brother, Jon, asked. He was focusing most of his attention on opening a bottle of Red Stripe.

"Actually, two weeks of not shaving," I said. "I'm trying to grow a beard."

Jon handed me a beer, looked at me and furrowed his brow.

"You look like white trash," he said with an air of authority.

Jon is an expert on white trash (Scruta albutum). What Einstein was to physics, Socrates to philosophy, Galileo to astronomy, my brother is to white trashology. You know those paleontologists who can determine everything about an animal based simply on a tooth? My brother is equally as proficient in determining the white trashiness of any given person, material item, turn of phrase, fashion or line of thought.

If he deems something as white trash, it is white trash. There is no arguing him on these points -- you would have greater success arguing that the sun is not hot.

Here's how I earned such a rebuke: Several years ago, the Gillette Co. sent me one of its Sensor razors when I turned 18 years old, locking me into a now-decade-old cycle of brand loyalty. Every year, in a desperate attempt to prove to myself that I am not beholden to corporate America, I try to grow a beard for my birthday. This year, I gave myself three weeks to grow a face full of Rasputin-like fuzz.

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After two weeks of effort, of massaging my jowls and willing hairs to spring from my skin, my beard was a scraggly, patchy, multicolored mess that -- according to an expert -- made me look like white trash. It had been verbally decimated in the time it takes to open a bottle of beer.

Clearly, I had failed again.

Jon ran his index finger along his jaw line, illustrating a full, even, manly man pelt of a beard that he was sporting.

"This took me two days," he said.

"Alexander the Great couldn't grow a beard," I snapped at my brother defensively. "He famously made the clean-shaven look very trendy."

Jon raised an eyebrow and rolled his response around in his head for a few seconds. For a moment, I feared that he would decree Alexander the Great was white trash. Think of the shockwave that would send through the academic world!

"You're stupid," Jon said.

"Ha! Stupidity is not your field of study," I shouted, and scampered away before he could taunt me anymore.

Admittedly, if Alexander the Great wasn't white trash, he was probably really annoying. Imagine him at a high school reunion:

YOU: "Alex? Alex the Great? Hey, buddy, I haven't seen you since we were in old man Aristotle's class together. What have you been up to?"
ATG: "Well, I've conquered the whole of the known world and I'm pretty sure that I'm a god."
YOU: "Ah, I see. I'm gonna go get some more punch."

Still, it had become clear once again that I would have to adhere to Alexander's fashion sense and remain clean-shaven. And in all honesty, I was somewhat happy to receive my brother's abuse -- my beard was itching like a sailor on leave in Amsterdam. It was the itchiest itch in all of itchydom. It registered a 9.6 on the Itchter scale.

No matter how much I scratched, my beard wouldn't stop itching. The itch was driving me toward madness. No wonder Charles Manson and Ted Kaczynski are such loonies.

In a final attempt to avoid the inevitable (I hated to be abandoning something a week shy of my self-imposed goal), I decided to ask my wife whether I should shave off my beard.

"Oh, honey. Do whatever you want," she said.

She was, of course, speaking in Wife Code. I'm sure that married male readers will realize that what my wife actually said was: "You should have shaved that miserable scrub from your face a week and a half ago. Remember when you attempted that pathetic and embarrassing goatee thing a few years ago and your grandfather accused you of being in the Taliban? This is worse than that. I deserve a medal for allowing you in the house."

A few minutes later I was hacking away at my dejected whiskers with my trusty Gillette Sensor razor -- exposing skin that was bright red from weeks of scratching. I splashed cold water on my face until my fingers were numb. My facial hair experiment was over for another year.

Maybe next year I'll just give up on facial hair and try to grow a mullet. I wonder what my brother would think of that?

Chris Cope is married, with no children. His column appears every other Tuesday.