Jennie Smash

I’ve let a few things slide lately, because I’ve been so busy. My eyebrows are probably not the most earth-shatteringly important item on that list, but you have to trust me when I tell you that it’s better if I stay on top of them. I looked at myself in the mirror this morning and if I’d been wearing a beard and making a stern expression, I would have looked just like my Dad doing his Sean Connery impression. Needless to say, I shrieked and started digging through the medicine cabinet for the tweezers.

I do my own eyebrows, because I’ve seen one too many waxing accidents, because my eyebrows are kind of a weird shape, due to a bar-related injury from some years ago, and because I am cheap. Generally, this works out just fine. I get to keep a few hairs over each eye and all the money in my wallet (both dollars). Sometimes, though, things don’t work out and I take too much, or more from one brow than the other, and I wind up looking like kewpie doll.

The bald brow look doesn’t even bother me as much as the possibility of winding up lopsided. A couple years ago, I plucked my eyebrows unevenly and didn’t realize I’d done it until I was at dinner with my mother and she stopped mid-sentence and said, “Are your eyebrows uneven?”

A few tears and blusterings later, she said, “OK, OK, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. I just … thought you should know. I don’t know why I said anything at all.”

“I don’t know why you did, either,” I said, through gritted teeth. “When you know how crazy I am.”

So, my point is, I’m a little crazy about my eyebrows. And, you know, just in general.