The eyebrow girl asked me if I waxed both the top and bottom (at least, I think that’s what she asked, I had fallen asleep on the cot before she finished her sentence). I suggested I would leave that to her expert opinion in the field of upper third facial hair. I was really just in for semi-regular maintenance and not a full-on tune-up. I was clear though, I do like to have some eyebrow, not one drawn with pencil crayon though I do see the appeal of being able to capture the essence of your mood with a couple of pen strokes each morning.
She started to talk about ordering a map of the world for herself and how angry she felt about the exorbitant price of shipping. So angry in fact, I could feel the wax slightly hotter than usual, the scissors that much closer to my scalp and the tweezers tearing with not-so-much a quick pluck, more like a Rottweiler chewing my hair out by the root.
When she finished she asked me to check her work which usually means standing and walking across the room to the mirror but for this meeting, when I opened my eyes, the mirror was being held an 1/8th of an inch away from my nose and was the full size of my head. I had a difficult time seeing anything that close what with the burn marks, the hair that had fallen into my eye sockets and what might have been an interrogation lamp hovering behind the map of the world on the adjacent wall.
I thanked angry map-girl, paid at the front check out and headed to the drug store for stamps.
I knew something was wrong by the looks I was getting but figured the area surrounding my eyebrows was red. Suck it. That’s just what happens and I’m okay with it. It draws attention away from my other flaws. But this time, there was something more.
It would start to make sense when I got in the van to go home and examined my brows in the rear view mirror. There was a small bald spot on the right side of my left brow. A strange sort of cut out that may or may not be a star, or an exclamation point
The woman behind me at the drug store who after having examined my eye brow stared at me for an uncomfortable amount of time and said, “I owe you for lotto but your gravy mix is still in my fridge.”
Oh my God. I’ve got some sort of gang symbol shaved into my eyebrow.
“So, we’re even?”
The thing is, I just don’t know where I rank. For example, can I get away with saying something like, “Talk to the brow, gravy lady?” or maybe I’m one notch below Home Perm and my best defense is to hand her the change from my stamp purchase and offer to carry her bags.
