More Tales of The Old . . . er
Well, now I'm older, and therefore one step closer to wearing my pants above my waist and SAS shoes in a variety of browns.

And what do old people do? They talk about the intracacies of things related to their bodies: hair in weird places, warts, ailments, medications, arthritis, joints, you name it. If I had a nickel for every time my grandmothers told me a story about what ails them, I'd be Paris Hilton rich.

So, in light of adding another year to my age, I feel inclined to join in this tradition of grandmas worldwide. Hence, it is time to talk about my chin hair.

I have a chin hair. Just one. On my chin.

In highschool I had a cheek hair. Just one. On my cheek. It was less like a real hair, and more like a fuzz-hair. It was lighter than the weight of a hair, and also light in color. It was hard to see. But apparently, it was there.

I didn't realize I had this cheek hair until one day when a boy at school pointed it out to a group of us standing around chatting about things non-hair related. It must have caught the light just right or something, because he reached over and pulled at it. It caught me by surprise, and I was embarrassed. He proceeded to point and laugh and tell everyone within range that I had a weirdly long hair on my cheek. For the rest of the week, I was the girl with the cheek hair.

I went home the afternoon of the cheek hair discovery, and I plucked it. I did that every time I noticed the hair returning to the place it insisted to occupy on my cheek. I kept careful watch. I stayed ahead of the hair.

The cheek hair eventually went away. I don't remember when, but it's gone now. I don't even remember where it was on my cheek.

But now, I have a chin hair. Although this one seems to be the same darkness as the hair on my head, so it stands out more obviously than the cheek hair ever did.

I've only recently begun to notice it, and I hope that I have been the first to notice it. I'm frightened by the thought that I could have been offending millions of people with a rogue chin hair that grew and grew for years, escaping my watchful eye and daily grooming rituals. Hopefully no one else has seen it, or was shocked and awed by the chin hair before I had a chance to tame it upon discovery.

The first time I noticed the chin hair, it was longer than I like to admit. I don't know where it came from, or how it got there, or why it decided to grow at that exact point on my chin. But there it was, taunting me, like the evil twin of the cheek hair that lost the battle many years ago.

I tossed around the idea of doing something fun with it, embracing the chin hair and possibly starting a new trend. Perhaps a bead fastened to the end of it, or giving it highlights, or perhaps braiding it or using a Hairdini with it in some way. But the more I thought about the chin hair, the more I realized it was unique. And not in a good way.

So, when I see the chin hair, I tweeze it. Otherwise, I don't know what I can do about it. When it's long enough to see, I worry that others have seen it. But until it is long enough to be seen, and therefore tweezed, there is nothing I can do about it.

I'm not about to shave my one chin hair. That's a little too extreme, even for a hair in a weird place. It makes me feel a little odd, as though I'm classifying it as an actual hair problem, when really it's just one stray dark chin fuzz.

I may call it a chin hair, and an actual hair it may be.

But by golly, I am not old enough to start shaving my chin, yet.

Hopefully I won't have a full beard, until I'm at least thirty.

C.T.