Beauty of the Beast

Yesterday as I was cleaning out my email box, the Groupon Deal of the Day happened to catch my eye.

I’ve talked about these before – it’s usually a good deal, except it doesn’t exist in Hickory. Instead, we get Charlotte and New York City’s deals so most of the time we don’t get to take advantage of whatever it is.

I wish I’d been able to do this one, though – it offered “Eyebrow Perms”.

Whoda thunk?

As I get older, I admit my grooming standards change. Hair in places that I’d like it is rapidly reducing to mere wisps of its former self, while I appear to have inadvertently fertilized for hair in places that I’d just as soon go bare. Being determined not to end up one of those guys with huge ears, nostril hair that could whip back and forth and lash someone during allergy season or giant caterpillars over my eyes I tend to take some note of these things.

I never thought of turning those eyebrows into an asset by perming them.

I remember it was a big deal when Mom and Grandma used to, “. . . give each other a permanent,” at home, although it seemed more like a “temporary” as it had to be redone on a fairly regular basis.

It involved squirt bottles of stinky stuff that we were forbidden to touch, plastic gloves and the kitchen timer. There seemed to be a zillion fine little curlers (as opposed to the pink foamy ones they wore to bed sometimes) that had to get all tangled up in their hair as they sat in the kitchen for hours laughing and gossiping. When it was getting close to time for the bell to “ding” on the timer, all the kids were forbidden to use the bathroom in the house because they would rush in, stick their heads under the bathtub and douse the framework of curlers on their skulls before taking it all loose and dropping them in the bathroom sink.

Once during this process, dad was working on the water well and sent me inside to tell them that the water was turned off. I walked in to see Mom leaning not over the bathtub, but instead over the toilet where Grandma was frantically scooping water up with a cup and dousing her head.

Fortunately, it’d been flushed although with a houseful of little boys you never know. I don’t think it would have mattered all that much right then, anyhow.

Since I’ve moved to my mid-life grooming regime, Herr Ronaldo has tended to my coif, at least as much as a person can. He still refuses to give me the haircut that instantly makes washboard abs and a 32 inch waist magically appear, but I understand that he took certain oaths when licensed as a cosmetologist that preclude him from sharing this information, along with their secret handshake. I don’t hold it against him (much). I’ve been going there long enough that I don’t have to try and describe what I want, something about which I am continually clueless.

I want a haircut. Take what I got, back it off about 3 weeks and put me there. What’s to understand?

I am hurt, though, that he’s not offered to perm my eyebrows rather than simply combing and clipping them. Here’s a potential grooming asset at a time when I am in definite need of a facial upgrade and he’s holding back the latest technology.

So I may look into it next time we go to NYC. I wonder if I ought to let them grow out some, though, so they got something for those little curlers to grab into?