Not by the Hair of my Chinny Chin Chin…by ARHuelsenbeck

When I was a little girl, our school nurse had a mole on her cheek with a hair growing out of it. I often wondered why she just didn’t pluck it out.

Now it’s nearly sixty years later, and after having cataract surgery, I finally understand.

She never saw it.

I wore glasses for myopia from the time I was ten years old. Gradually, my lenses grew so thick I could hardly find frames hefty enough to hold them. Then my sight became cloudy, and I thought I would have to surrender my driver’s license and give up my job. Fortunately, I passed (failed?) the glare test, which qualified me to have surgery covered by my medical insurance.

With plastic lenses implanted in my eyes, my vision is nearly 20/20 for the first time in my life—for distance. I have to wear glasses to read and to sew, but that’s a happy trade-off for me.

Image by torgakhopper on flickr.

What I didn’t realize, though, is that with or without glasses I can no longer see whiskers on my face and neck, until one day my husband said, “I’m so sorry about your mustache.”

“Huh? What mustache?”

“Your mustache. It must be so embarrassing for you.”

What was truly embarrassing was finding out I had one.

Sometimes when I’m in the car and look at the little mirror on the visor, I’ll see whiskers on my chin and neck. Ew!

But when I get home again and march to the bathroom mirror to yank them out, they’ve vanished. Invisible.

Sometimes if I turn my head just so—there it is! An inch long, waving in the breeze. But do you think I could grab it with my tweezers? No way. I try and try and try, but my eye-hand coordination on mirror images is not what it used to be. Getting old is for the birds.

Do you remember the scene in My Big Fat Greek Wedding where the mother of the bride has her sister tweezing her stray whiskers? I laughed when I first saw it. Now I wish I had a sister.

 

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