Public Humiliation of the Day

Oh, how things manage to "shape" our days in unexpected ways! Yesterday afternoon after work I headed over to the mall on my way home. There's a great salon in Austin (Tara's) that opened a little shop there last year, and while I would generally avoid salon services at the mall (yes, I'm a snob about things such as this...I already know that), I have been a faithful customer of this establishment for getting my brows threaded since they opened.


So I ran in for a much needed service and was completely bummed when I saw that the shop was closed while they were moving to a new location in the mall (is being next to Nordstrom really THAT much of a reason to close and relocate?). To cheer myself up I headed down to Old Navy to shop for cute, cheap scarves (it IS the year of the scarf, after all) and on my way I was startled to come across a kiosk that turned out to be Tara's temporary home. I'm not going to lie. It took me a moment to agree to have my brows threaded RIGHT THERE. Smack dab in the middle of the mall. This required sheer bravery. Public hair removal is not for the faint of heart. But I had a situation going on with the brows and they needed to be tamed. So I took a deep breath and hopped in the chair.

That gnawing sensation in the pit of my belly...you, know, the one I should have learned to listen to by now? Yeah...that's the one that I should have listened to last night. It started OK, then I realized that the conversation of the (very lovely) girls working on me wasn't merely chit chat, but instruction. That's right. Not only was I enduring the gaping stares and comments of passers-by, I was in the hands of...wait for it...a TRAINEE. Yeah. You can pretty much figure out how this is going to end.


I was paying very close attention to the tone and inflection of the conversation (actually a great distraction from my horror of being so on display) and it was all going well. Right brow done. A look in the mirror for approval. Perfect.

Then on to the left. Also seemed to all be going well. I'm still not quite sure what happened, but they finished up the left and then went BACK to the right. Now, I know that at this point I should have opened my mouth and asked, nay, DEMANDED to know what was going on. But I didn't. I think it's going to require some therapy to understand why I don't speak up in moments such as these. But I'm nice. I want to be respectful. I want to trust. And after all...it's just my FACE we're dealing with.

I assume she was just going to do a little touch up to even the two brows. And then I heard what I was fearing from the beginning. The one who was "supervising" gasped. Then, in horrified tones started to shout instructions to the "trainee". Panic sets in and I was seemingly paralyzed while more hair was being removed. Then...and I just love this...they give me a huge smile and hand me the mirror while gushing about how great I look.

Yeah...except about a quarter of the right brow is GONE. Right there between the pretzel stand and the bejeweled cell phone booth I was BROW SCALPED.

When the dust settled I was too deflated to even go scarf shopping. I instead made a beeline for Sephora to investigate brown pencil options.

Brow pencil? Check. Appointment for therapy? Forthcoming.