Resistance Is Futile

I come from a family of pickers and squeezers. We scratch each others' backs, pop each others' zits, tweeze each others' splinters (a favorite of mine), peel sunburned skin, and excavate each others' dermatological blemishes. I have never scratched my mother's back without having her ask, "is there anything to pick?" I'm sure this strikes most people as disgusting, but we think it's kind of awesome.

It's taking my husband some time to into this tendency, but he's slowly but surely learning to appreciate it. He's getting better at letting me poke and prod him with tweezers, needles, and my nails, and he's even reciprocated a couple of times. The only thing that he won't let me touch, much to my dismay, is his eyebrow hair.

Jason's hair is brown, and he has brownish-blonde eyebrows that are relatively normal except for this one, super-blonde, mutant hair that's about an inch long. It sticks out and curves back dramatically, and is noticable from every angle because it's so much lighter than the rest of his eyebrows. It's mezmerizing. And I'm going crazy from wanting to pluck it.

The Hair went away a few months ago -- perhaps in the shower or as part of the natural shedding process -- but it's back with a vengeance now and it's driving me mad. Last night we were sitting on the couch talking, and I couldn't stop staring at The Hair. Just sitting there, mocking me. And then Jason noticed that I'm staring, and he'll mess with me by brushing at his eyebrows so that The Hair sticks out even more than usual, and joke that he'll pull it out by himself and donate it to Locks of Love. It's torture.

But I'm determined to triumph. If I have to sleep with tweezers in my bedside table and pull it out in the middle of the night, I will.