Ode to the Imperfections

In this era in which I’m seeing more and more people with faces frozen in perpetual surprise, I’m sort of liking some of my imperfections. Is that weird of me?

Maybe. And I don’t mean all of my imperfections, either. The truth is, I have jowls that could use a support garment. But there’s some other stuff on my body that I’ve grown sort of fond of, in a way. Battle scars, I guess you could call them.

For example, I have a scar that I'm sorry to say is fading because it makes me laugh. You know the sit com joke about the shirt with the iron print burned on? I have an iron print—the tip of one—burned on my arm. I tried to iron while watching a movie with a cute guy in it and got distracted.

Then there’s the extra rib. After an x-ray, I was told by a solemn-faced doctor that I have an extra rib on one side. He carefully explained that it shouldn’t make me feel…you know…freakish. He said it as though he clearly thought it should. In my mid-thirties, I was just old enough that it made me laugh and exclaim that, to be honest, I am a bit freakish.

When I was a kid, I knew a Girl-with-No-Bone in her pinkie toe. Only cartilage. I always admired the fact that she had sense enough not to be bothered by it, and if you asked her, she would take off her shoe and bend it every which way like a fake rubber toe. It was so cool. Funny how we don’t always get smarter when we age, isn’t it?

I had another friend with an extra nipple. She was a teeny bit embarrassed by it, but she did show certain people if you asked her right. Frankly, I was unimpressed. It was on her stomach and didn’t have an areola or anything. Really it just looked like a flesh colored mole.

So anyway, today I noticed another one of my mutations is back. I think generally my eyebrows are pretty normal, but if you look closely, they are very long and sparse. Occasionally I get this freakishly long one. I blame the Scottish side of my family. Have you ever noticed some of those Scottish guys have eyebrows that look like somebody took a golf club and lobbed a couple of small animals at their foreheads? I must have the female version. Anyway, I tweeze this thing out, but then it slowly grows back until it’s so long that it really needs its own hairstylist.

One of my new year’s resolutions is to add photographs, so here goes. Below, for your viewing pleasure, is my Mutant Eyebrow Hair. I had to add it to its own post because otherwise it wanted to go to the top of the post, and that just ruined the suspense.

I haven’t talked to my old friend in years by the way. Maybe I will write her and ask her if she still bends her toe for people in that cool way. I hope she does.

"…I was merely reading the Muggle magazines. I do love knitting patterns." ~ Albus Dumbledore