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The Hair on My Chinny, Chin, Chin

The hair on top of my head wasn’t the only thing that changed after having babies. For some strange reason, it seemed that I had begun sprouting enough hair on my chin to compensate for what I had lost above.

It started with a few coarse, black hairs. You know, the ones that you’ve seen on your grandma’s chin. You can try not to stare at them as you’re discussing your latest crochet project with her, but they’re like little pupil-magnets, impossible to tear your gaze away from.

Yep, I started getting those.

No big deal, I thought. A manageable problem. So I went out, bought my first tweezers and took care of those babies on a bi-weekly basis. Pluck. Gone. Pluck. Gone. I could handle that.

Then suddenly, it seemed that the couple I needed to pluck had multiplied and the plucking became a daily chore. (Chin hair, apparently, grows at lightening speed and when the chin hair colony feels threatened, it reproduces rapidly, resulting in a beard-like effect, almost overnight.)

With the onset of my new, ever thickening, wanna-be beard, the lighting in my bathroom was no longer sufficient and I started to carry a tweezers with me everywhere I went. I kept one in my car, one in my purse, even one in my best friend Ann’s car, just in case I saw a straggler while we were heading out of town.

I found that the lighting in the YMCA locker room was, for some reason, absolutely superb chin-hair-plucking-light, but it was always rather embarrassing to do so with a group of strange women looking on.

Ann encouraged me to try waxing, and in fact, she’s a cosmetologist, so she could take care of it for me, no problemo. Cool. No more tweezers obsession? Nice.

So she took me to her salon, warmed up some green goo in what appeared to be a very tiny crock-pot and prepared to wage war upon my new enemies. I was excited. Elated, even. (When you’re a working mother of two, living in a small town in northern Wisconsin, getting out of the house for a good wax job may just be the social highlight of your week.) So I laid back in the beautiful, leather chase lounge and awaited my beauty treatment.

I’d heard horror stories about waxing, but seriously, how bad could it be, right? Wrong. She gooped that stuff on my face with a popsicle stick, rubbed on some printer paper and Rrrrriiiiiiippppp! “Aaaaahhhh! Shit! Shit! Shit! Oh my, God. Oh my, God!” I screamed as I tenderly cupped my chin. “That felt like you ripped off half of my frickin’ face.”

A nice best friend would have comforted me in my time of need, soothing me with an encouraging rub on the shoulder, but Ann just laughed and shoved me back down in the chair for further facial torture.

When it was all over with, the lower half of my face was throbbing in a beat that matched my pulse, and tears were dried in salty streaks down my face. She sent me on my way and reminded me that she had done me a favor and was in essence freeing me from my tweezers ball and chain.

By the time I went to bed that night, I’d decided that she was right and it was worth it. The throbbing had subsided and the idea of no more tweezing was quite appealing. Take that chin colonizers!

When I work up the next morning I couldn’t wait to see my new hair-free face. I popped out of bed, padded into the bathroom and was greeted by the reflection of a woman who looked just like me but was sporting a bright, red, hairless beard of swollen skin.

“Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no,” I whispered as I gently felt the tender area around my mouth and chin. “This can not be happening!” (I might mention here that I had decided to wax my chin just before my husband’s company Christmas party…a great idea…so I’d be silky smooth for our romantic night out! Nice.)

I dialed Ann’s number and explained the situation. “Oh yeah, sometimes that happens. Put some moisturizer on it and it’ll be fine by tonight,” she said. Oh good. I raced back to the bathroom, figuring that every minute counts, slathered on some moisturizer and hoped for the best.

Every hour or so I’d reapply the moisturizer, checking the damage in the mirror as I did so, and with each passing hour I realized that things were not looking up for me. I was going to have to go to Dave’s Christmas party with a beard of thousands of swollen, red dots.

I tried cover-up, but for some reason, none of my make-up would stick to the reddened area. Maybe it was the swelling or maybe it was the heat seeping out of my irritated pores that simply melted the makeup before it had time to settle – nothing made me look any better.

I realized that I was going to have to go to the party sporting my new look. There was no backing down or hiding in a closet. Attendance was a must.

I was forced to do, what I like to think any woman in my situation would have done…I picked out a dress that showed a ridiculous amount of cleavage and hoped that everyone’s attention, when focused on me, would go to my half-exposed saggy boobs, instead of my new hairless beard.

Someone once said that there comes a time when you must “pick the lesser of two evils.” Maybe they had a Christmas party and a chin waxing on the same day too.