MyPheme – Tell It Like It Is

When a wife and mother of two in the prime of her life makes the shocking discovery that she is descended from Methodist werewolves, she employs a mythical device to help hide her gruesomeness from her family and the world at large.

I’m driving the other day with the sunroof open (in keeping with California state law).  As I glance in the rear view mirror, the sunlight hits my face at just the right angle and [cue slasher theme from “Psycho”] I make the grisly discovery that I am the fourth member of ZZ Top.
 
I am used to being a girl who has the typical, factory-installed amount of hair with standard default settings for location and density.  But this?  This is beyond the occasional wax-the-downy-soft-peach-fuzz-from-my-upper-lip-type situation.
 
My cheek looks like an old tennis ball.
 
Benefits to having robust facial fur:
 
*  Helps preserve body heat if you get lost while glacier-climbing.
*  Auto mechanics take you seriously.
*  Children’s friends aren’t sure who you are, but they friggin’ mind you.
*  Going to a wedding?  You can braid festive baby’s breath along your jaw line.
 
I try plucking.  I try waxing.  Still I have more nap than a rumpus room carpet.  It quickly becomes apparent that I have no choice but to seek superior firepower.  Enter the Bosch “Smooth Operator” Two-Speed, Three-Headed Epilator with Faux Python Holster.
 
How hard can it be, right?  I’ve been through childbirth twice.  I’ve had food poisoning.  I’ve worked in PR.  I’ve known agony.
 
I begin, say, next to my right ear.  Bzzzzz.  The tiny metal wheels turn furiously, grabbing those fuzzy hairs by the throat and yanking them out at a rate of, I don’t know, a thousand per millisecond?  (I’m just ball-parking here.)
 
I can do this.  A slight sting, maybe a prickle.  But it’s worth it, right?  After all, somewhere under that turf is my old face.  (Well, that didn’t come out right.)
 
I move on to my cheek.  BZZZZZZZ.  The machine sounds different now, like it’s kicked into a lower gear.  I’m glad I spent extra for the turbo model.  My eyes are starting to water a bit, but by God, I’m no wuss.  I hold an image in my mind of what I used to look like before I started channeling Burl Ives.
 
The chin.  A veritable thicket.  BZZZZZZZ.  Die, little hair bastards, die!  Ha-ha!  I swear I can hear them screaming as they are torn from their follicular bunkers.  Oh, wait.  That’s my voice.
 
The upper lip:  last remaining pelt outpost.  Also the repository of approximately 8.2 gazillion nerve endings, each with its own, quivering plume holding on for dear life.  I pause, blowing the smoke and singed fringe from the end of my appliance as I give the stinkeye to the little hairs in the mirror.  I look very badass indeed in my woven serape, hat pulled low over my eyes and the brown stub of a cigarillo screwed into the corner of my mouth.
 
I am no stranger to torment, my friend.  Only one shall leave the bathroom today.  The other shall perish, living on only in children’s folk songs and Etch-A-Sketch art.
 
::click:: BZZZZZZZ.
 
The machine surges and bucks but I hang on, pushing again and again into the plush frontier of my upper lip.  I try to wave the burning hair away from my teary, bloodshot eyes as I release a primal shriek, but it’s coming in waves now, like grass clippings shooting out the side of a lawnmower.
 
Just before I black out, I have a vision of what awaits when I come to.  I’m splayed on the bathroom floor in super-high-waisted jeans that have not seen natural sunlight since 1996, surrounded by neighborhood children and a few stray dogs, all staring curiously at the now-drained device snarled in the underbrush of my upper lip.
 
My secret is out.  Soon everyone in the public school will know that I am…
 
THE WEREWOLF.

(Catch more of Anna Lefler at her blog, LIFE KEEPS GETTING WEIRDER!)