When I was a little girl I shaved off half of each of my eyebrows. I didn’t do it to make a statement or send a message or to be cool. I did it out of pure curiosity and a burning desire to be all grown up. My friend Laura and I locked ourselves away in her room one afternoon. She had stolen her mom’s make-up and assured me that we were allowed to play with it. After carefully painting our faces, she brought out her mom’s razor. She shaved one stripe up each of her legs, and took the peach fuzz off of her toes. I wanted to shave something, so I thought I’d take a tiny bit off of my eyebrows. I took just a few hairs off of the top of both when I realized that I now had uneven brows. To correct this, I took a little more off of the other side, which caused them to be uneven in the other direction. This evening out continued until both eyebrows were over half gone, and I had given up knowing that I wasn’t going to have eyebrows left if I continued. We stashed the stolen make-up and then, forgetting our new found “maturity”, went out to play.

My mother picked me up a few hours later, and we went to buy some groceries at Cash Wise Foods. I can still point out the exact end of the isle where my mother finally took a good look at me and discovered my mutilated brows. You must know that of all of my features, my mother is most proud of my beautiful eyebrows. You see, most babies have no eyebrows when they are born, but I had lots of hair and two perfectly formed brows, and they were the talk of the nurses in the hospital where I was delivered. It is also notable that I was born into the era of Brooke Shields, and full eyebrows were very much the trend. My mother was proud that a genetic twist had given me such an edge up on beauty, so when my perfect brows had all but disappeared, she was horrified, to say the least.

She had me trapped between herself and a shelf of canned corn and began firing inquiries about the state of my eyebrows. Had I plucked them? Did I let Laura pluck them? I repeatedly answered no, insisting that nothing had happened. After all, she hadn’t landed on what I’d really done, and I suddenly had the impression that she just might flip her lid if I confessed. I kept up the stalemate for a little while longer, until I realized that I was going to be trapped with the corn until my mother had a good answer. I finally muttered that I had shaved them. This did not help the situation. After many pathetic explanations and a lot of curious shoppers walking by, my mother finally told me that sometimes when people cut their eyebrows off, they don’t grow back. My mother chastised me by saying that it would be all my fault if I had ugly, misshapen brows for the rest of my life and had to paint them on in a perpetually surprised pose like one of the old ladies my grandmother worked with. I had been blessed with naturally beautiful brows, and I had utterly destroyed them.

There is nothing like guilt to teach a child a lesson. I spent the next month worried sick over the state of my eyebrows, knowing that unless they grew back, I would look weird for the rest of my life. Thankfully, they did grow back. Now I see things from my mother’s point of view, and hope Maggie never gets creative with a razor, because I know I’ll be the one in a tizzy by the corn.