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I’d Raise an Eyebrow Over It… But That Would Just Make It Worse

Hmmm. I don’t really know how I should feel about this. It’s really never come up before.

Before I go into detail, I want to mention that I’m a very low-maintenance kind of guy. I shower every morning, and wash my hair. Then I comb, throw on some deodorant, toss in my contacts, brush my teeth, and swish a bit of mouthwash. Hygenically speaking, that’s pretty much the normal routine.

(And always in that order, too. I learned the hard way that I’m rather easily confused early in the morning. It only takes a couple of days wearing toothpaste under your arms and combing your teeth to learn that you need a system. But at least you don’t have to worry about tartar buildup in your armpits. So you’ve got that going for you.)

Anyway, I don’t go in for a lot of the ‘cosmetic‘ treatments that seem to be all the rage these days. My daily routine is closer to Survivor than Queer Eye. No ‘hair product’, no ‘eau de cologne‘, no tweezing, no lotions, no muss, no fuss. Just the basics.

So. Back to my current problem. I got my hair cut on Thursday, just like I mentioned I was going to. Fine. My hair is nice and short, just the way I like it. That’s not the problem.

The problem is my eyebrows. Rather, my left eyebrow. See, during the haircut, the barber did a bit of shaping up there. Apparently, my eyebrows were ‘wild and unruly‘. Like a pack of hungry wolves, or shrieking teenyboppers at a Clay Aiken concert. So he trimmed my eyebrows. Trimmed them! I’d never heard of such a thing from a reputable, no-nonsense barber. Trimming eyebrows, indeed. What’s next, a bikini wax?

(Um, no, actually. I asked. He said he could do it, but we’d have to go in the back room. I passed.)

Anyway, he hopped in there with the scissors, and even a shaver type of thing, and trimmed my eyebrows. It’s at this point that I should probably mention that my barber is no spring chicken. Neither is he a summer duck, nor even an autumn turkey. I’m not sure exactly what sort of fowl he is, but I’ll tell you that he’s definitely in his ‘winter years’. There’s not a lot of tread left on the ol’ tires, and I’m not sure how well he can see these days. And of course, therein lies the problem.

See, it’s not so big a deal if he cuts a few hairs on my head a little too short.

(Assuming that he doesn’t actually draw blood, of course. I have my limits as to what sort of mistake I can forgive, and the line falls somewhere short of any error that causes a hemorrhaging head wound. Call me a hard-ass, if you want. That’s just the way I am.)

So, if he can’t see exactly what he’s doing during the haircut, that’s fine. I’m not all that picky. But the eyebrows are trickier, more delicate. Trimming them requires a light and careful touch, not to mention keen eyesight. Apparently, anyway, because my barber has neither, and now I have an eyebrow-and-a-half of problems.

The right one is fine — less ‘wild and bushy‘, I think, but otherwise, it looks pretty much the same. The left, though… oh, the left. It’s still there — I’m not gonna have to pencil any shit in there — but it’s noticably thinner now. It takes up about the same amount of space, but it’s sparser and barer now. It’s been pruned more than trimmed. I can almost feel my head leaning to the right, as the weight of those extra hairs over there pull me over. I’m lopsided, uneven. And I can’t stop rubbing my eyebrows, trying to decide how big a difference there is.

In other words, I’m now neurotic about my eyebrows. I have become the weepy, spritzing, over-chic fashion nut that I beheld and disdained. I’m just that close to going upstairs and finding little scissors, or tweezers, or even toenail clippers, and evening the damned things out. Ugh.

Let this be a lesson to you no-nonsense, just-the-facts sorts of guys (and girls) out there — I was once like you. I never rubbed things on, or scrubbed things off, or knew what the hell a ‘loofah’ was. Hell, I didn’t even dry my hair — I just combed it and forgot about it. But now… now that I actually give a damn about my eyebrows, of all the ridiculous things… well, shit, I don’t know. Can sculpting gel and exfoliating scrubs be far behind? Am I falling down that slippery slope into three-hour-long bathroom trips and constant mirror checks? Will my ‘personal appearance checklist’ soon include more than making sure that I’m booger-free and my fly is zipped? How much do I tip a manicurist, anyway? Bitches! Damn you, you uneven, hairy little monsters! Damn you — you did this to me!!