Today I am going to try something different with you all, I’m going to tell you a story. And I promise, it has a point in the end and it’s also a really funny memory that I’m never going to live down— so why not throw it out into the open now, right?

Ready? Here we go.

As children, we do a lot of things we can look back at and pinpoint exactly what went wrong. Like, just a hypothetical, looking into my memories to find a key in my hand, inches away from an electrical outlet. See, I wasn’t always this brilliant. Or watching myself wear the same pants to school for a full week— gauchos were pretty awesome back in the day, they were a bright orange too, but awesome enough for that? Maybe not.

But I think one of my greatest moments was a dumb one, I admit it, and I get reminded of it at least once a year. I should have known better and the thing is, I probably did. Sometimes we just have to accept the mistakes we are about to make and instead hope for the best while we go ahead and make it.

That’s exactly what I did.

Did anyone else’s parents always tell them not to run with the scissors or take the stairs with lollipops in their mouths? I’m sure mine did but if I’m being honest, I don’t remember. What I do remember is them telling us not to play with sharp things, or when I asked my mother about makeup, she told me to take my time and I didn’t need it anyway. Thanks mom, you’re the best. Of course my dad also told me to be strong and independent, so if I wanted my own set of screwdrivers, he would get them in a heartbeat. I still have them in my room here in SLO.

We’re told a lot of things, what to do and what not to do. But we’re not told everything… Some lessons, we simply learn at our own expense.

Picture this, it’s back to school night in second grade, the perfect chance for the younger kids to sneak onto the big kid’s playground while all the parents have to sit through whatever actually went on in those meetings. I took the twirling bars with a few friends while my brothers ran around doing their own games; it didn’t take me long to get off of those things, talk about a dizzying headache and a wrecked equilibrium to boot.

So I’m minding my own business right, Coke or Pepsi book in my hands (if you don’t remember those, here’s a picture, I spent all my bookfair money on it one year), and Kris runs up to me with his older friends, laughing hysterically. Ignoring them, even though of course I wanted to be included, all I hear is “you won’t believe it” and “you have to look, it’s so funny!”

I should have known it would be at my expense, and also completely my fault.

I hear someone tell me to look up, so I do, and all of them burst out laughing immediately. My face gets red, at least as red as even possible for me, and I storm off in the other direction like the emotional child I was, due to my own embarrassment. I was so far from laughing at the time it almost makes me laugh more now, looking back on… Well, how I looked in that moment.  

Would you have laughed at an 8 year old me, missing half an eyebrow, clean cut?

See, the night before, I thought it would be fun to see how effective one of those pink dollar store razors could be. I wanted to “see if they actually work,” if I remember correctly. I think I knew they did, but I was too young for leg hair and you couldn’t triple-dog-dare me to try it on my head, so my eyebrow was the next best option.

Surprise surprise, those things are highly effective. And of course, being the resourceful girl I was, I tried to hide it from my brothers by doing what?

I colored it in with a Sharpie.

After laughing profusely, Kris tried to help me straighten it out, but I can only imagine the jokes my parents had for each other when I left dinner that night. I must have looked ridiculous. Actually I know I did, an image of my face in the mirror with half a sharpie’d in eyebrow is burned into my brain even twelve years later.

So be it, I had to deal with that mistake until my eyebrow finally grew out again and the sharpie washed all the way out. I think one of my eyebrows is still slightly crooked compared to the other, and I’m pretty sure that night has everything to do with it. Even so, a friend even reminded me of that night at our high school graduation– like I said, never living that down.

But I also said I had a point to this story right?

Sometimes you just need to laugh at yourself, even if it’s a few years after. Because we all do stupid things, hopefully with small consequences, and on occasion not so small consequences. At least for a lot of us, life can get rough or busy or stressful or all of the above. And it’s important to remember that in those moments, you need to find something to laugh about.

The point of this story was to hopefully provide that something. I mean, come on, an 8 year old me, wearing what was most likely a Paul Frank monkey T-shirt, bright orange gaucho pants (I mean like these, but not cute), hair in cornrows, and half an eyebrow sharpie’d in crookedly and  a whole lot darker than my actual eyebrow(s)…

Trust me, if that visual doesn’t tell you, I was quite the site to see. But I hope you got a good laugh out of this today and if you’ve got a better story than mine, feel free to share yours! Happy Friday everyone, have a fantastic weekend.