I recently emerged from my surgeon-mandated Cocoon of Rest to get my eyebrows threaded savaged (more on that later). My life has been so boring of late that I try to put one activity on the calendar each day. And sometimes it’s something shallow like addressing my eyebrows.

Judge away.

I was the first customer to show up that day so I interrupted the brow lady’s breakfast. I sat for a moment and waited. This woman and her business partner, both originally from India, have been doing my eyebrows periodically for the past five years, and I didn’t have anywhere else to be.

Once she was done, I lay back in the barber-style chair and we started chatting.

“So what is this Halloween? I have lived here in American many years and I still don’t understand.”

“Hm. Well. Kids dress up in costumes. And adults too now I guess?”

I was totally uptalking.

I continued in a way that sounded a bit like “something, something…um, Day of the Dead in Mexico? And then there’s Santa for Christmas and a bunny for Easter! Wow, this is a strange country.”

I thought about showing her this picture of me dressed as a bunny for Halloween but then nothing in this world would make any sense ever again.

In the end, I blame this bizarre conversation for the end result which I didn’t really notice until days later. Given the history, I thought she knew I still wanted a full, natural shape. Basically the eyebrow equivalent of a hair trim.

The result wasn’t as bad as the Ghosts of Eyebrows past, but they’re pretty skinny (for me).

Oh! Another weird thing? I don’t know the name of either of the eyebrow women and after going there for five years, I feel like it’s way too late to ask.