One day I get a phone call from my friend Skittles. "Why do I bleach my upper lip?" she asked. I am sure you can imagine my surprise at this funny little question, out of the blue. After a short pause, she must have sensed my befuddlement and so repeated it slower, clearer, louder, "WHY DO I BUH -LEACH MY UP-PER LIP?" Oh...I get it, of course, that's not a silly, self evident question. As I started to come up with a lucid and well thought out answer...she broke down and finally said...."Oh Muse! I don't know what to do....." and started to recount the events of her day that led up to this particular moment in time.
My friend Skittles is a multi-tasker....she has to be since she is a mother of three boys. This day was no different than any other. It started off with Skittles running in different directions getting her sons off to school, helping her husband get ready for work and looking after their pets, all before going to the dentist and running numerous errands around her small Vermont town of Rutland.
In between the boys, the pets, the hubby, she also managed to get a shower, shave her legs, paint her nails and bleach her upper lip. Looking at the time, she realized she needed to run out just then to make it to her dentist appointment on time. She rinsed off her face, put her big fluffy hair in the pony tail and wooosh! out the door she ran.
Dressed in her signature outfit consisting of a white wife beater, jean overalls with one strap hanging down, work boots and reflective aviator glasses, she called her "cop" shades, she made it for her cleaning just in time. After finishing up at the dentists' office, she proceeded with her errands. Walking through her little town making it to the post office, the bank, the pharmacy, the grocery store she soaked up the admiring looks she knew she was getting from others as they too addressed their duties for the day. People seemed attentive and extra friendly offering smiles as she passed them by. Catching a brief glance of her store front window reflection, she knew she still had "it". She was all that and a bag of chips and was more than happy to strut her stuff. Off she went to get herself a bite before driving home to meet the kids as they got home from school. With music blaring and her voice matching it note for note, she titled her mirror down to check herself out one last time as she pulled into the driveway.
"Aaaaaah!"
This is when she called me. Seems she had misplaced the little plastic utensils that come with the facial bleach and had instead used a knife and bread plate. The chemicals had reacted with the stainless steel knife and had left Skittles with a nice, dark, black line over her lip she had intended to bleach.
It's at this point that she was calling me to find out what to do to get this black mark off of her. She relayed the story to me and recalled in hindsight the "admiring looks" now realizing that they were curious stares.
When we stopped laughing (and crying) long enough, I promised to call some salons and find a solution to her immediate dilemma. Unfortunately for Skittles, the collective response from the professionals I called, besides the disbelief and unbridled laughter, was that my dear friend would have to live with her new beauty mark until the day came that it would eventually wear off.
It was hard to tell her the bad news but I felt confident that she would feel better knowing that she surely couldn't be the only 5-foot nothing, fluffy-blonde haired, wife-beater-jean-overall wearing woman walking the fine streets of Rutland and that surely no one would know it was her behind those shades.
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