slightly related hijack
Once, a week before a big Thanksgiving get together, my wife decided she needed to have her eyebrows waxed, as plucking was too long and painful. Why she felt this, I don’t know…I thought her eyebrows looked fine, but then, I have the fashion sense of a medieval recreationist, and so my opinion is not really relevant to “modern” fashion. Regardless, I knew one thing for sure; there was no way in hell that I was going to be the one doing the waxing. Fine, she said, though she berated me gently for being the cowardly sort. She called up her best friend, and the two of them agreed to have a “waxing party”, since said friend was going to the same party.
I decide that I want nothing to do with it, so I retire to the living room to play video-games, drink beer, and act, in general, like a slob, because the opportunities to do so are rare. I’m in the midst of playing a dastardly and violent game (GTA Vice City, joy!) and I am just thinking to myself that my, the screams of pain are so realistic, when I realize they are coming from the bathroom! Being the curious sort, I wander back, and knock gently on the door.
“Is everything ok in there?”
“Yes,” a slightly giggling voice answers, “(My wife’s friend) just didn’t realize what waxing felt like…she’s okay.”
At this point, the door slides open a crack, and I see the two of them giggling, with my wife’s poor friend holding a damp washcloth to her face. A few moments later, she pulls it away, and the raw, pink-but-hair-free area around her eyes is starting to regain its normal skin tone, and lo, her eyebrows are shapely and defined. Wow, I think, I guess that stuff really works. Back to the game. A short while later, I hear another scream. Ah, that must be my darling wife. A brief interlude, then another, more horrified call, with the sounds of “oh, no!” added in. Again I rise, and head back to the bathroom-turned-torture chamber. Again the door creaks open…
…and oh my dear God!
I remember hoping that I didn’t say that out loud.
I remember realizing that my mouth was open.
I rememer my wife turning away and sobbing.
Okay, I did say that out loud. I’m a jackass.
But how else could I react? For there, her hair pulled back and pinned at random, was my darling wife, with little bandages with pink goo leaking out on one half of her face, and on the other… 1/4 of an eyebrow!
I look in shock to my wife’s friend, who is desperately fighting a war against horror and humor, intermixing the sounds of sobs and giggles.
“Wha…” I begin to ask, and my wife’s friend blushes furiously.
“I…I put too much wax on the strip,” she admits, “and some leaked. I thought only the stuff on the strip would come up, so I pulled…”
My wife inserts a sob.
“…and, well…”
My wife’s friend holds up one of the aforementioned bandage things, and there, perfectly recreated on that nightmarish glob of pink glue, is 3/4 of my wife’s former right eyebrow!
“Oh…” I begin, but I really had no idea what else to say. I pondered for a moment.
“So…what now?” I ask.
My wife stops sobbing, takes a deep breath, and looks in the mirror.
“We’re just going to have to pull the other one,” she says.
“Right then,” I say, “Bye!”
And I went back to the living room, waited for the scream, then came back. There was only about 1/5 left this time, and again with the sobbing, which, thankfully, did not last as long this time. After surveying the damage, and after begging, initially, for me to phone the President and have Thanksgiving cancelled, she realizes there is nothing left but to “bare it all” and remove the remaining bits of eyebrows.
So I left again.
Wait for it…AHHHHHHH!!! There it is! Back to the bathroom. After the swelling, redness and small amount of bleeding go down, she cleans up a bit, and my wife and her best friend paint on some greasepaint eyebrows. My wife turns to me with her new “eyebrows”, and on her face is a look of trepidation, anxiety, fear, nausea.
“How do I look?” she asks, her voice again on the verge of breaking apart in to incoherant sobs. I look at her, see that trembling lip, see those tear-filled eyes, and my mouth opens again…
“Darling,” I say, “You look beautiful.”
She smiled, hugged me, and though she was far from “all better,” she let me know that I didn’t need to call the President and that Thanksgiving could go on as planned.
So yeah, greasepaint eyebrows look terrible…but I’ll never say it out loud.
Of course, she’d having the same friend over tonight for a New Year’s waxing party…so I best bite my tongue.
I had a nice natural arch that looked kinda 
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