They did joke back ofcourse. They just aren´t used to super clean shaved balled head plus beard combo. My dad had a much bigger beard when I was a kid, but he had also hair on his head back then. They see the shaved head plus beard as ´extreme´ or something. I think they will accept it very soon. As a teenager I was a punk and had a mohawk. In the beginning they were NOT happy with that but after a while they found it amusing.