Oh, Pluck!

You know, when I packed on some extra pounds as I grew older, I didn’t much like it, but I accepted it. Had to; I did it to myself and enjoyed every bite. And as the gray hairs started appearing more and more frequently, I even accepted that, because I sure didn’t want to retreat to the mandatory hair-coloring prison of my former blonde years. But the whole dimming eyesight thing seems so unfair.

Estimated life spans increase year after year, that’s not news, so why do we still have eyes built to last for ancestors who had life spans of only 40 years? Can’t the process of evolution keep up?

I’m thinking about this because I have looked closely in the mirror this morning, bowing my head to peer over the top of my glasses, which is the only way I can get a good look at my eyebrows. The magnifying mirror doesn’t magnify enough to let me see the individual stray brow hairs without my glasses on, and when I put the glasses on and look at the mirror straight ahead, the frames of my glasses pretty much hide the brows.

So there I am, head bent over, chin(s) tucked into neck, peering upward into the magnifying mirror held high in my left hand, and I see those hairs I hate, and I want to tweeze those little suckers. I dig around in my makeup basket for the tweezers and try once again, though I know it isn’t going to work, to contort my right wrist into some kind of angle that will allow me to stick the hand holding the tweezers behind the lens of my glasses and pluck out the offending hairs.

Can’t do it. First of all, it’s really hard to reach up (or down) under the eyeglass lenses, even on the right side. Fuhgedabout the left side, which requires reaching my right arm across my chest and using a backhand motion to go around my left cheek before I can even begin to probe with the tweezers. Another problem is that to pluck means to pull abruptly, and with maybe 1/4 inch to work with between my brow and my glasses, there isn’t much room to do anything abruptly.

Until I find a better mirror, I’ll just do what I always end up doing: I’ll whip out my leg-shaving razor, make scraping motions under both eyebrows, and hope for the best.

I should have anticipated years ago, when I got my first pair of reading glasses and noticed my face breaking out when I wore the glasses and clearing up again the instant I stopped wearing them, that the problems wouldn’t end there.