Right off I want to let everybody know that I have total permission from my mom to write about her eyebrows tonight. Just want to get that out there so I don’t have any family members kicking my ass for picking on my poor mom. People are very protective of her.
My mom is physically almost the exact opposite of me. She is petite, blonde, blue eyed and virtually hairless. While I dream of lottery riches leading to marathon laser hair removal sessions leading to life long bliss, my mom has no need to even shave her legs. She does but really doesn’t HAVE to like I DEFINITELY HAVE to. Let me tell you, I REALLY have to.
My mom has always coveted my eyebrows. I have to admit, my brows are pretty nice but I really have to landscape them very regularly to keep them that way. If left unchecked my brows would unify like the Colors of Benetton. On the other hand my mom, for as long as I can remember, has had to draw her brows on with her handy dandy eyebrow pencil. If I had a dollar for every time I have heard my mom say that she just had to “put her eyebrows on” before she could leave the house I could afford all that laser hair removal I so desperately need.
Recently the unthinkable happened, they stopped making the shade of eyebrow pencil my mom relies on for her very existence. What to do? Others were purchased but the shades were just not quite right. My mom decided to do what she had been threatening to do for years – tattooed eyebrows!
The morning came when my mom said she was going for her “special appointment” but I honestly didn’t think she would actually go through with it. She had been psyching us out for years by saying she was going for it and then bailing out due to the cost or outright nerves. I completely forgot about the whole thing so you can imagine what happened when she and my dad dropped by my place that afternoon.
I opened the door and apparently, according to my dad, the look on my face was priceless. The only thing I can equate the experience to is to imagine opening your door to your mom who has eyebrows that can only be compared to carefully cut pieces of electrical tape stuck above her eyes. There was my petite, cute and VERY BLONDE mother with two jet-black eyebrows. Then the inevitable question was asked, “What do you think?” When I got around to shutting my gaping pie hole I think my response was “OH MY GOD!”
I have to say that she was pretty calm considering that I would have been fucking hysterical if I had brows like that. But then I pretty much do have brows like that so what am I talking about? My dad and I sat in my living room while my mom tidied up my apartment-I was just post lumpectomy at the time. Every time my mom left the room my dad and I would start to giggle. When she would walk back in we would start to talk about the weather.
When my heart rate finally returned to normal we sat there and talked about The Brows and I had to think waaay back to when I got my tattoo. I assured her that the colour did mellow out a lot over time and what we were seeing then was a lot of residual ink just under the surface of her skin. We all decided that no fits would be thrown in any aesthetic salons until things healed up.
It has been a couple of weeks and the brows have, indeed, mellowed out significantly. My mom is thrilled that she no longer has to fight with a shaky hand every morning to draw something that might have to be construed as natural on her face. And we all know if The Mama is happy then we all are happy.
However, when anybody asks me about my mother’s new tattooed eyebrows I always say, “You mean The Great Sharpie Incident?”
8 comments:
Oh my. Oh my my my my my.
That's VERY funny! My experience with tattoos is nil, but my experience with Sharpies is extensive.
Note to everyone: don't leave a three-year-old boy in a car alone with the Sharpie you just used to mail large packages (the car was in our garage, people, and he was pretending it was a spaceship. Get off my back.). Bad idea.
And don't leave a Sharpie on the kitchen table when you go take a shower if there is a three-year-old girl in the vicinity. Again, bad idea.
Can you believe I'm a parent??
I defer to you Misfit. You are the head office of the Great Sharpie Incident. I am merely an Incident in training.
My mother and I are like you and yours in the hair removal department. She has never had any need to remove any from anywhere, drawing on the eyebrows, etc., and I have used every concoction and method imaginable -- no lasers yet, though. Your mom is BRAVE. The words "permanent" and "face" are scary when used together, in my humble opinion. Glad it worked out.
I should clarify that the children didn't use the Sharpies on their faces. I guess I should have said that.
It would have been pretty freaking funny if they had, though.
Yikes. I was really hoping that story would end with 'she was just playing a practical joke. She had drawn them on herself." But no. Nope. Not at all.
Do they really look ok now? Why wouldn't they tatoo them in a lighter colour?
This was so funny; bittersweet even. Your mom makes me think of mine - she's pretty envious of my brows as well - she has none!! Seriously! and as you said before - she threatens to get some tatooed on. "Over the top," I say, praying that she's kidding!
I just want to assure everybody that the brows are OK. They look just like they did when she had to draw them on herself. Maybe a teensy bit darker but not much. The hardest thing for me to get over was that I had it in my head that if they were tattooed on they would look like natural hairy brows. Probably impossible. However, they don't call it permanent make-up for nothing - they look drawn on. I would say my only complaint, which is actually kinda ironic, is that the colour tattooed on is more red than tan - the whole reason why my mom had them tattoed on in the first place. She thought the new shades of pencils were too red and not the right tan colour as the discontinued one. Yet she also says she was having a hard time getting them striaght and even everyday and overall is really happy with the results. If she is happy then I am happy. Most people never even noticed the difference anyway. Interestingly my brother also had a mini stroke when he first saw them. He noticed right off, too. You just can't fool your family.
Summer - I simply have no shame. I will probably regret the confession later.
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