[Image credit: Josch13 for pixabay.com]
“They look like caterpillars.”
The young man who was, I thought, supposed to be giving me a haircut was looking at my face in horror.
We were in my daughter’s London flat and he’d been booked to do her hair. Since she was still in hospital, I thought I could do with a cut and maybe a bit of color. But I was sitting at her table, so there was no mirror that could verify the presence of even a single member of the Lepidoptera family, let alone multiples.
I’d just started to get that creepy-crawly feeling—you know, the one you get when you see a spider and then can’t find it again—when he touched my eyebrow. “Do not worry. I will fix. It will be fast.”
It was not fast. In fact, it took forever while he happily shaped and plucked and even colored. I tried to explain that I’m retired. I don’t wear makeup any more, I try to comb my hair at least every other day (whether it needs it or not), and I have never, ever, not even once, colored my eyebrows.
I have now colored my eyebrows. And my hair.
“But…your hair never had any gray.” The Hub was confused. “Why did it need to be colored?”
And that’s why I’m still married to him.
Barb Taub 
Hahaha – love it! But you do have fabulous eyebrows… mine are like caterpillars 😀
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Well sure…NOW they’re fabulous. I give it a couple weeks max, and it’s back to caterpillars…
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what a perfect partner he is. p.s. i learned so much about your family from your book, delightful )
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What a lovely comment! Thanks so much.
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Haha my eyebrows look like caterpillars every two weeks or so too! Lovely post 🙂
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I’ve gone more than six decades without having my eyebrows “done”. But I’m guessing in another 60 years I’ll just have to do the whole thing again…
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I’d give my eye teeth for caterpillars ( except for the exorbitant fee the dentist would charge to replace them…). I never plucked mine… but they are pale and balding nonetheless.
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I worked for a lady who had her eyebrows and eyeshadow tattooed on permanently. Maybe you could try that? (In the interests of full disclosure, her entire staff found the results decidedly creepy…)
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I think I’ll stay with sparse… though creepy could be fun 😉
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Brow-terpillars… That’s what I call mine!!! Need regular maintenance!
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Haha! Brow-terpillars!
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🙃😜
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Since we moved to Spain my caterpillar eyebrows have been growing in leaps and bounds! I am constantly having them trimmed. I love husbands with poor eyesight too!!
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Por favor, siegue mis cejas de oruga. (Please mow my caterpillar eyebrows.)
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Lovely husband, yours! I have two caterpillars, too – I have to use scissors to cut their sprouts every couple of weeks. They grow like weeds. They are very gray, my hair is not – what a problem.
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Apparently you can dye your eyebrows. Next time you can’t think of anything more fun to do with your afternoon. (Root canal? Watch paint dry?)
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Barb, the color is lovely — and so are the eyebrows. At least you have 2 eyebrows. I only have one… it goes all the way across…
How very true. Have a wonderful Wednesday. Hugs!
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I do have the standard two, but one is noticeably higher than the other, which makes buying glasses a challenge. You, on the other hand, completely rock the specs.
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You’re so kind. This pair better keep lasting. When I went for new ones (same prescription) they apparently can no longer make any I can see through. I sent back four pair because I couldn’t see a thing — same prescription. Scary thought.
Hugs.
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I’ve never had my caterpillar coloured though I occasionally have them waxed. I always think I’ll keep them neat – but I never do. Lovely man your husband 🙂
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Waxed? O the pain.
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It’s over very quickly, unlike threading or tweezering!
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Bless his aging eyes! I’ve not heard my eyebrows described as caterpillars (at least so far the hairs are short and even) but I have heard “beetling.”
(Has Ellen Hawley done a post about “beetling” yet? I always remember a British novel-for-kids in which characters who were actually spying explained that they were “beetling, like crags and eyebrows.”)
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“beetling
ADJECTIVE
attributive (of a rock or a person’s eyebrows) projecting or overhanging.”
Fabulous!
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um, as the token man here, am I meant to understand this? As a child my father bred caterpillars but I’m pretty they never spent any time on either his or my mother’s face
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And what’s that all about? I’ve known men with eyebrows so aggressive they look like they could go several rounds with Muhammad Ali in his prime. But nobody ever suggest they wax, shape, or color those suckers.
In your case, however, I think all you need to do is ask your wife why other women do such things, and mention innocently how glad you are that she has never needed to do so. (You can thank me later.)
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Ah yes. It garnered a smile and at last the mystery of her tweezers collection is explained…
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That’s a great spouse you have there. 🙂 (And you look great too. 🙂 )
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He certainly has his moments! And thank you!
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Reblogged this on anita dawes and jaye marie.
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My ex-caterpillars thank you!
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I have always envied people with eyebrows. Mine have never amounted to much and are fading fast these days!
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Somehow I’ve lived more than six decades without giving my eyebrows their proper attention. (Or any attention at all.) Personally, as a facial design feature, I think they’re overrated. After all, what evolutionary advantage has the eyebrow ever provided? Did the Neanderthal woman say, “What a fabulous unibrow you have! Clearly, you are well suited to mate with me!”
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I know what you mean, they are not that important in the scheme of things, are they?
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That’s great 🙂
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Thanks, Pam!
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Aw, what a lovely hubby.
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He says he agrees with you, and wants to know if I could stop introducing him as “my first husband”.
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🙂
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Reblogged this on Where Genres Collide.
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Thanks SO much for the reblog!
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You’re welcome, Barb!
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I wish I had been a little less aggressive with my caterpillars in the past, because now they are shedding. One only has half left so I have to pencil in the other half. If only they had turned into butterflies. Wouldn’t that be exotic. And my hubs is so lovingly blind too; it’s why I keep him around.
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I’ve always thought that having our sight fail as we age is in many ways a mercy. I remember my mother saying how shocked she was at what she could now see after her cataract operations…
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It totally is. You want to feel gorgeous, get a partially sighted husband. Sometimes I put my glasses on when talking to friends (you know, those 3 times a year when I actually see them), and take them straight off again. I want to see them how I think they look, not how they really do look.
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Ha ha ha!!!
My husband is the only man in front of whom I have ever worn a shower cap. I think that says a lot.
btw, I get my eyebrows ‘done’ once every month – I only started doing this when Julia nagged me; before I used to inexpertly pluck them. It never occurred to me to get them tinted as well as waxed until I heard Jo who does them said, ‘Um, do you want them tinted, too? I felt she was telling me something. Like, that she could no longer pluck out all the white ones.
With you on the combing hair bit. Half the week it’s in a knot on the top of my head, and I don’t brush it unless going out. Too much of the wretched stuff falls out, these days!!!
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My 2-year-old granddaughter has a similar disinterest in having her hair combed. I was hypocritically explaining that she had to get it combed before she could go to preschool, while trying to remember the last time a comb had visited my head.
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Well done with respect to the hubby…
I am reminded of shopping with my Dad for a present for my Mother.
When asked about size my Dad helpfully mentioned my Mother weighed about 110 lbs … (he failed to mention that that was pre giving birth to 10 children!)
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Haha Mary! I remember when that same Dad asked me to buy our Mother some new lingerie. He said for some reason, she kept returning the ones he bought for her…
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I’ve been off-planet. It’s always good to come back and catch up on my Barb reading.
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