A three-chin-hair day

This is how it goes when you're a woman of a "certain age." You can begin to rate the quality of your days based on how many chin hairs you find. Now, I'm not talking about any little peach fuzz kind of hairs. These are pig bristle babies. As hair begins to thin out in the places you normally have it (and want it), strands show up in new, more creative places. I figure I find one or two on my chin just about every week--usually when I'm driving the car or am somewhere out in public-- and happen to touch my chin absent-mindedly.

Immediately, I forget about everything except... tweezers! All conversation and surroundings become a blur as I plan my actions. By now, I have learned to keep the little instrument in my purse and only have to find a way to find a moment of privacy to get it out and lay waste to the hair before I turn into Wolfwoman. I have pulled over to the side of the road... screeched into parking lots... ducked down at a stoplight... raced to any kind of restroom or closet... just to pull out that damned hair. There is no obsession worse than knowing you have a chin hair just sitting there... catching the sunlight... waving in the breeze... screaming to the world that you are a senile old crone! (No one ever gives you credit for the possibility of having the power to grant three wishes or have magic beans. Oh, no. They just assume you are past it in every sense of "it.")

Anyway, today has been a three-chin-hair day. The biggest crop ever at one time. I was beginning to think I had "outgrown" the bearded lady stage (possibly it was another phase to be passed through) because I hadn't found a stray hair for a couple of weeks, but no. They fooled me. They waited to sprout all at once-- like some kind of skinny Greek chorus, loudly proclaiming my cronehood.

Now this is the kind stuff nobody tells girls about when they're young. It's too disturbing. Almost as scary as the spin they put on having a baby... that labor really doesn't hurt. All you have to do is breath in a really dorky way, and the little cutie just pops right out. Right. I'm here to tell you that I've been through labor and delivery twice. (Why, you ask, did I do it a second time if it's so bad. Because the FIRST time, they gave me so many drugs it took me weeks to remember most of the procedure. That was before the granola people pushed "natural" childbirth on an unsuspecting public.) I'm here to testify that, if they told us the truth, it would mean the end of the human race-- even without global warming. If females understood the reality of it all from the beginning, there would be no more sex... ever. Women would carry weapons to debilitate and eviscerate any man who even pretended to approach her in a sensuous manner.

Of course, in this day and age we might be able to go the petri-dish route; but, first, they're going to have to make some pretty big petri dishes to bring those little darlings to term. O.k., maybe I'm exaggerating a little. I love my two children more than life itself. It's just that the way they got here has to have been some kind of terrible design flaw. I don't buy that "punishment-for-Eve's-sin" nonsense. I didn't even know her. I'm not even an accessory to the crime. I demand a re-trial!

It's not all just pain and facial hair. There's lots more, too... but I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise.