Lyle Victor Albert likes to push the envelope of his existence. Some of us do this once in a lifetime. Or on Saturdays. He does it three times a week — by shaving.

Albert has cerebral palsy, a condition which affects motor skills and makes the manipulation of sharp metal against soft skin a truly dangerous act. It also is the central metaphor for another act, Albert’s one-man show, “Scraping the Surface,” which he performed Saturday at Minsky Recital Hall at the University of Maine.

“Scraping the Surface” draws on a long tradition of traveling storytellers. Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde, though lecturers, stood solely in front of an audience and spoke at length about universal issues. The goal is to be entertaining and maybe to teach something. Albert, who is Canadian, does both.

His story doesn’t so much preach about CP as it does use CP as the backdrop to a life picture. Every word is framed — if in no other way than by his halting voice — by this disability. But in some essential way, the show has very little to do with CP, a term which is never mentioned in the 70-minute performance. Indeed, “Scraping the Surface,” which is smoothly directed by Jamie Norris, both highlights and transcends being “jumpy.”

One of the most retellable stories Albert relates takes place when he was 17 and received a special edition, high-tech electric shaver for Christmas. The shaver was a facilitating tool, for sure, and his parents paid a high price to accommodate their son. But when Albert found out his favorite rock band, ZZ Top, was coming to town, he quickly hocked the razor to buy tickets. He went to the concert, but then was left with either telling his parents of his transgression or using an actual razor.

As he puts it, he could “tell the truth or take my life into my own hands. Either way, there was going to be blood.”

Albert’s stories are generally well-crafted, whether he’s comparing shaving to golf (“You pick up a club and hope you don’t slice”) or admitting that, in high school, he was voted the “most likely to become a burden on society.” He’s a solid writer — comedic, articulate and instructive. However, his punch lines are sometimes predictable and slightly corny. You feel as if you’ve heard these jokes before.

But what the show lacks in freshness, it makes up for by being demanding — in a most fascinating way. Albert’s vocal patterns and movements are at first discomfiting. He doesn’t ask you to cut him a break because he is disabled, but it’s tempting to feel obliged to do so anyway. And he admits that he, too, has used his disability to get a few breaks. But in a society that so often tells us to look away from people with disabilities, Albert asks us to look him right in the eye, and to laugh with him.

The process of adjustment and acceptance by the audience becomes the biggest tale of all. Albert forces us to take him on his own terms, and to go with him on a journey as we would any person who has a story about life’s difficulties and absurdities. And he seals it with a reassuring axiom: “Everything heals eventually. That’s life.”