Sunday, November 23, 2008

TWEEZE LOUISE!

One of the side effects of advancing, ahhh, maturity is the amazing ability to grow hair in all kinds of unexpected places.

In order to preserve a happy relationship of long duration, I will exclude She Who Must Be Obeyed from this discussion, confining my remarks to my own hair-growing abilities...which are prodigious.

Tufts of hair will sprout at random on my back and shoulders, something that really skeeves the Missus out. But since I don’t see these, they don’t bother me much. The ones that do bother me are the ones that grow in my nostrils. Yes: I speak of the Dreaded Nasal Hair.

There is nothing that will destroy a Romantic Mood - nothing that will let the air out of Mr. Debonair - faster than the discovery of a clot of long Nasal Hairs a-growing out of one or both of my nostrils. I’m reasonably fastidious about keeping my facial hair trimmed up, but once in a while - probably owing to my declining vision - I will miss a newly-grown Nostril-Tuft. Yeef.

The choice is to trim them with a scissors, yank them out with a pair of tweezers, or use a specially designed Nasal Hair Trimming Device. The Device poses the smallest risk of doing actual damage, but it is not always effective. Scissors, on the other hand, are very effective, but there’s that small possibility that one will have an involuntary spasm or an unexpected sneeze, causing the pointy tip of the scissors to be driven into the nostril wall...or directly into the brain. Which leaves...the dreaded Tweezers.

Tweezing one’s eyebrow hairs is unpleasant enough, but tweezing one’s Nostril Hairs is practically heinous. Yanking those bad boys out will make one’s eyes water in pain. OK, it doesn’t compare to being waterboarded at Gitmo, or having wooden splinters driven under one’s fingernails and set alight, but it’s a lot less pleasant than not yanking them hairs out and just leaving them to grow, eventually, into (one hopes) decorative patterns. But sometimes you just have to Man Up and start ripping.

There are also those rare instances when the Missus and I will be out and about, whereupon she will notice a few wayward strands of Nose-Hair. With no Trimming Devices or tweezers (zircon-encrusted or otherwise) handy, there is only one way to deal with the situation: the Two-Fingered Desperation Tweeze.

You simply try as best you can to pinch the offending Nostril-Hairs between the thumb and index finger, then pull them out in a swift (and exquisitely unpleasant) motion. If you succeed, you will be rewarded with an entire tuft of hair, hopefully without any attached boogage.

The casual observer may be revolted, thinking you are picking your nose. But you know that the truth is far worse.

The last time I did this, I will confess that the worst thing wasn’t even the momentary agony.

It was the fact that alla them hairs were white.

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