To be honest, my eyebrows are about the last location of my body's temple that I have ever thought about. I can do the double brow lift, a tacit "hey, how you doin'," and I can do a decent left eyebrow arch, the hmmm, intriguing thing, though for the life of me I can't get the right brow to budge on its own. And that folks, is all there is to know about my eyebrows, or was to know, until this morning.
I've been spoiled my whole life. Up until recently I had probably had my hair cut 99% of the time in my life by one of about five barbers. But lately I've been on the lookout for a new one. Over the summer I found a great one, a guy named Lu (perhaps most of why I loved the guy was that he's Lu, not Lou). He cut my hair twice. Alas, he's 87 and I just learned he retired. I learned that today from the woman who cut my hair, just three doors down from Lu's old place. Now both times I sat in Lu's chair he asked me if I wanted my eyebrows trimmed. Nobody had ever asked me before, and the first time I politely declined, thinking Lu was just doing what he had been doing for nearly 70 years. The second time he asked I declined again, thinking, I'm not one to care about brow grooming. But afterward, I started to get a little defensive. Is there something wrong with my eyebrows? Are they hideously bushy? Do people talk about me behind my back: "Lookout, here comes Bushy Brow"? I'm sure for the first time in my life I took a long hard look in the mirror at my brows. They looked inoffensive enough, but who knows, maybe Bushy Brow Guys are the last to know. But, since I've never really worked any kind of a definable 'do--just get it cut whenever it starts to bug me-- time passed and my thinking about my eyebrows returned to normal, which is, never.
But today, this rather sassy, though perfectly pleasant woman who was cutting my hair just announced, after seemingly finishing with my haircut, "Now we'll take care of your eyebrows and we'll be all finished." It was morning, I was on my way to a Saturday in December retail job, I wasn't thinking clearly yet, so instead of throwing my arms up over my eyes and declaring, "Nobody, ma'am, but nobody touches my brows!" or at least finally breaking the taboo and shyly asking, "What is it with my eyebrows all of a sudden? I'm just getting used to trimming old man hair tufts from my ears and nose; must diligent attention to my brows be paid too?"--I just sat there and acquiesced to the woman's trimming implements. It took about thirty seconds, with absolutely no excitement, pain, or sensation whatsoever.
And so, for the first day in my life, I am sporting trimmed eyebrows. Big deal, right? I sort of nonchalantly considered the whole ordeal as nothing much at all while walking out of the place, but my God, the difference! I was amazed at how swift I felt doing my usual pre-work 40 yard dash warm-ups in the back parking lot. Prepared with the usual retort of "Yep, all fifty-three of them," for when people at work would invariably ask me if I had gotten a haircut/hair cut (yuk yuk), I was flabbergasted when, within the first hour of work, three different people came up to me and said, "My God, Dan, your eyebrows. What have you done to them? They look fantastic!" Then, as I shopped at the Everything's A Dollar Store (sometimes I shop, other times I just go in there and pick up random things and ask new employees, "How much is this? This? This too?"), buying some Christmas wrapping paper, the cashier lingered while giving me my change and finally hissed as she dropped four pennies into my hand, "Your brows ... so ... alluring." At the Dollar Store no less.
Anyway, a big day. Now I'm just wondering where a guy can get a manicure on a Sunday.
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