The Hare Loses Again

There was a time in my life that I hated my eyebrows. They used to be thick, dark, and slightly unruly. I suppose I hated them because they snaked across my forehead like a brown, fuzzy caterpillar. Yes, I was sporting a unibrow, until I discovered tweezing when I was in high school.  

I would stand at the mirror, tweezers poised in mid-air, and carefully select the stray hairs I wished to remove. Selecting each wayward strand, I pulled quickly. My skin would smart from the pain, and my eyes would water. It was such a tedious process, and it hurt.

Anyone who knows me knows that if I had been in Aesop's Fable about the tortoise and the hare, I would've been the hare. I love to go fast, to tear around getting things done. If something is too time-consuming, it will be a challenge for me to stick with it. No slow and steady for me. I want to get things done the quickest way possible. 

I kept thinking ANYTHING would be better than tweezing. I thought about waxing. I thought about bleaching. I kept thinking...

One weekend when I was visiting my dad and stepmom, I was in the bathroom before we were called down for dinner. I was sitting on the countertop, and scooted closer to the big mirror over the vanity. As I was getting ready to pluck the latest crop of hairs growing between my brows, I noticed my disposable Bic razor over my shoulder on the edge of the bathtub. Shaving couldn't hurt as much as tweezing.  

Not bothering to use lotion or shaving gel, I simply razored them dry. I held the razor over my right brow, and starting in the middle, pulled the blade to the right. Oops. I went a little farther than I'd hoped to, and removed a little too much of that side. I returned the razor to the middle of my brows, and pulled it over the left side. Not quite far enough on that one. So I took another pass, and went a little too far.  

Back to the right, trying to even them up, I removed a little more.  

"Time for dinner!" my stepmom called.  

Hm. I surveyed the damage. I now had NO stray hairs between my brows, and I was missing more than half of each brow from the inner brow to the middle above my eyes. The dry razor had left the skin above my eyes looking red and irritated. My strangely groomed brows made me look like I was caught unaware, similar to the deer in the headlights look. Not exactly what I was hoping for. 

"Coming!" I yelled, tossing the tweezers back into the drawer. Maybe no one would notice, I hoped, pulling the hair that framed my face more to the center  of my forehead. Yeah, that would help.

After we said the blessing, our family of six dug into our dinner. I was concentrating on my food, staring straight ahead, not wanting to draw any attention to my accidental "makeover." From the corner of my eye, I caught Dad doing a double take.

"Princess, what the HELL happened to your eyebrows?"

"Dad, don't..."  Now, my brothers, baby sister, and stepmom were all staring at me.

"Seriously, were you TRYING to get them to look like that?  They're practically all gone. What were you thinking?"

"Da-ad...I didn't MEAN to. It just...happened."

"Well, they look terrible."

"I KNOW that!" My eyes were starting to sting, but not from tweezed hairs.  

Easier is not always better. Faster does not always get us the desired effect. Shoulda been a turtle this time. Shoulda not tried to take the easy route.  

"Slow and steady wins the race." Some of life's lessons are hard learned. Thank goodness that just like hair after a bad haircut, eyebrows grow back, too.