Life Stories and Beyond

By Lisa Batten Kunkleman

I really should keep tweezers in my car, along with other preparedness items like jumper cables and a flashlight. I’ve had several appointments lately where a medical professional needed to mess around my neck—and thanks to my new menopausal hair that grows in all the wrong places, my biggest concern was not some dreaded disease but that several whiskers had sprouted up overnight.

 

It bugged me so much, I brought it up with a nurse. When she asked how I was doing, I said, “I’d be a lot better if I had a pair of tweezers. All the way here I was feeling this little pokey hair under my chin but I can’t pull it out with my fingernails. When the doctor is supposed to be feeling my formerly hairless lymph glands, he’s gonna get pricked.”

 

The nurse said, “ I know girl. Right? Those little stinkers can pop up overnight. You can have a whole forest under there and never even know it until somebody shorter than you is looking up under your chin and rudely points it out.”

 

A week or so later, dang if it didn’t happen again. I was sitting in the dentist’s chair waiting for whatever fun Hygienist Jenny had planned, when I remembered a hair on my chin that mocked me in the rear-view mirror while I sat at a stoplight. Let me tell you, that’s the best place to pull out the tweezers and work on wayward growth. The daylight in a vehicle is amazing. I have got to get a pair to leave in the car.

 

Jenny was busily excavating and probing my teeth, (did you ever notice they use the names of cars for dental instruments), when I asked her, “Any chance you have a pair of tweezers so you can yank that obnoxious beard hair out? I’m sure you can see it with your spectacular goggles.”

Jenny laughed out loud. “Nope, I don’t have tweezers and I also can’t give Botox. I wish we could provide some fun services since our patients are already reclined like they’re relaxed and ready to stay put.”

 

“Oh Jenny. You may think I’m asleep in this chair while you’re picking and flossing, but actually I’m pondering. I’m imagining how haircuts, head massages, and mani-pedis would go over well, and even better, some moustache waxing. The possibilities are endless.”

 

Jenny laughed again and said, “By the way, my peripheral vision is so bad with these magnified glasses on, all I can see is tiny teeth that are made bigger, so don’t worry about me seeing a stray hair.”

 

• Back at home, perturbed with the bad light in my bathroom, I aimed a mini flashlight up into my neck shade. Wowza! What a difference light makes. I saw the beginnings of a new grassland. Maybe a savannah. The flashlight is the bomdiggity. Heck, I’ll stock up on tweezers and little flashlights and leave them all over the house like people do with reading glasses. Maybe tweezers and mini flashlights should be sold as a set. I may never be bearded again. Oh my. What am I thinking. Forget the flashlight. There’s already one in everybody’s phone. I can design a tweezer pouch to attach to the phone case. QVC TV shopping, look out.