Yeah, yeah, you know what you said: “I wanted to be reincarnated as a blonde!”
Well, maybe you should have been a little bit more specific…
“When life hands you lemons, make lemonade!”
Good lord, I hate that stupid ----- saying. But sometimes you gotta admit that even stupid ----- sayings can hold nuggets of truth and wisdom. I mean, finding the silver lining to whatever negative-seeming situation life (or Karma-with-a-capital-K) might send your way is an incredibly valuable life skill, if you’re willing to learn it.
For me, my personal “lemons”–my burden to bear–would be being bestowed with luscious locks of hair more yellow than any lemon you’ve ever seen.
Now, before you go laughing at my perceived woes, consider this: I get the brunt of more than my fair share of the archetypal1I’m intentionally using the wrong word here for humorous perhaps, ya jackass. “dumb blonde jokes”, yet I don’t enjoy anywhere near the numerous mating advantages that a blonde female might.
Sure, I get compared to Chris Hemsworth regularly–as in “you might be able to pass as a poor man’s poor man’s Thor” or “you like what would happen if G0d hated Chris Hemsworth”–but it’s just not the same.
But I digress. What I’m really getting at is that if you, like me, find yourself in that Venn diagram of people with driver’s license that say “Sex: M” and “Hair: Translucent”, don’t despair! In fact, I say “rejoice!”–for you have a rare opportunity on your hands.
So for all the fellas out there who will never get the chance to be a “tall, dark stranger” in a real-life romance novel, allow me to show you how to make the best of your station in life, and then some, perhaps…
“I kinda liked having a beard…you know, not having to shave every day. It was pretty sweet for a chill surfer dude like myself.”
I started to nod in agreement as my boss from my stint in Hawaii, Vandrew, waxed philosophical about male facial hair. But before I could clearly signal my agreement, he continued his thought.
“It’s fantastic, man, I’m telling you! You really should try it someti—”
He stopped short and squinted at me for a second.
“Oh wow. You already have a beard. Holy cow, I never realized it…have you had it this whole time?”
“Dude…yeah, I had this beard when you interviewed me for this job almost 2 years ago, and I’ve had it every day since.”
“Sweet…”
“Seriously, though? How many times have you looked me in the face, and you’re just now seeing it. I would call you ‘Captain Obvious’ but I wouldn’t want to drag his good name through the mud like that.”
“Oh…um…sorry…I guess I just–I, uh…”
“Hah! I’m just busting your chops, man! You really shouldn’t feel bad about your utter lack of observational skills. In fact, let me tell you about my, um, ‘social experiments’ from my college days…”
“You notice anything odd about me?”
It was already Day 9 of the first of such inquisitory explorations of mine, and I was getting a little impatient with the rotating group of 20 or so of my friends that I would regular eat at in the dining hall. Emphasis on regular here, mind you.
All I got was blank stares, so I tried to nudge them in the right direction.
“You notice anything different in this region?” I hinted as a waved my hand in a circle around my face.
“Are you…wearing lipstick?!?” one of my lady friends gasped lightly.
“What? No–my lips are always naturally that plump and juicy. No, let me try this again: Anything odd…up here?” with my updated hand gesture, I was now limiting their options to the bridge of my nose and up.
“Ah! You’re wearing colored contacts!” another one of these yahoos exclaimed with complete and unwarranted confidence.
“Dammit, no. Those are the irises the good Lord gave me from the day I was born. Are y’all seriously not seeing it?!?”
By now my finger was wildly circling one very specific region of my face. Surely they would get it now.
Chong, my Vietnamese friend whose racist nickname was bestowed by my Korean friend– ----- Asians, amiright?–was sitting next to me and had the best view.
“What you talking, dude, you look completely norm–SWEET BUDDHA, WHAT DID YOU DO TO YOUR EYEBROWS?!?”
A light rabble passed through the peanut gallery as the others finally saw what he was seeing: the product of an eyebrow trimming that had gone completely off the rails. And I do mean completely…
“Wait…did you shave pinstripes in your leg hair?!?”
“Ding-ding-ding! We have a winner!”
I raised the arm of my friend J-Maker2For the record, her last name is spelled ‘Makar’, but it reads better as J-Maker–the pun being that it sounds like ‘Haymaker’ the name of the dorm that me and many of my friends lived in at Kansas State. like she was a ----- heavy-weight champion.
“And this time it only took you 3 days–and no hints! You’re getting better gang!”
“Another slip of the Bic?” one of my buddies without any sense of forethought wondered.
One of the other females tried to get ahead of any potential untoward mental images.
“Aht! Aht! Aht! I don’t think any of us want to know what you had to be shaving for you to end up with stripes down your leg.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle at the thought she had just put in my head. But I couldn’t let the crowd continue with the notion that I would be so careless with sharp objects around my, um, ‘family jewels,’ so to speak.
“Oh no, just sheer boredom this time, actually…”
“Hey, hold on a minute. Look that way for a second…mmm-hmmm. Okay, now look the other way…holy sh*t, you didn’t–you couldn’t–you wouldn’t dare!”
I swiveled my sh*t-eating grin back and forth so the fabled Tiffany Chestnut–my future ex-girlfriend at the time–could get a good hard look at what I had allegedly done.
“I…I…I have no plausible theory as to why you look like a supervillain from Batman,” she stuttered.
“Whatever could you be talking about?” I coyly feigned ignorance.
“How long have you been like this? HOW LONG?!?”
“Care to clue me in?” I was savoring every last drop of this moment.
“Your face!”
I did my best Home Alone impression, clasping my hands to my face, but without the overwrought expression of terror on my face.
“Oh…yeah, that,” I said while stroking my whiskers with my left hand.
“You gonna explain or not?” she half-demanded.
“It’s just that shaving…well, it’s just so ----- exhausting. And I guess I’ve just been a little lazy lately–but hey, who’s gonna notice if I stop shaving the left side of my face?”
“Well, me, for one.”
“Really though? It only took you six days…”
The point of the story is: “when life hands you lemon-colored hair, you grab your Gillette and some shaving cream and make the most of it by ----- with people’s heads.” I’m pretty sure that’s the moral is here.
Either that “or that you can’t trust a blonde guy to be alone in a room with a razor…”
Content created on: 14 January 2023 (Saturday)
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