Let's get quizzical

I've always wanted to be able to raise one eyebrow. I think it's sexy, that quizzical look. I've spent hours in the mirror attempting it to no avail. I've contorted my face into strange, inhuman shapes and yet, unless I tilt my head, my eyebrows remain at the same level.

That was, until last Saturday. That was the day I went to my neighborhood salon to get my eyebrows waxed. I guess that paying a woman to rip your eyebrow hairs out with hot wax is really putting a lot of trust into another person. But I'd been doing fairly regularly for years and I'd never had a bad experience.

It didn't last long – just a few brushes and a few rips. But when I got up to look in the mirror, my eyebrows hardly looked like they even belonged on the same face. One curved up into my forehead while the other shot off down toward my ear.

I pointed this out to her. She nodded and said in broken English, "Ya, this one straight, this one curve."

"Right. But they were even when I walked in here. I was kind of hoping to leave that way."

"Hmmm…" she peered at my eyebrows. "Okay, I have idea."

I lay back, not confident at all as she started plucking away again. I got up again to look in the mirror after a few minutes. They were still uneven, just thinner.

"This left one is higher," I pointed out.

"Yep, yep." She agreed. And motioned to do more plucking.

I stopped her, "This is fine. They'll grow back."

The woman at the front looked at me with pity in her eyes and told me that I don't have to pay this time. Or ever, I thought to myself, as I'm NEVER COMING BACK HERE.

The good news – I can now raise one eyebrow. Without even trying. All the time.