Getting Older

I have always been an old soul, so when my body began to catch up to my soul’s age, I was already at peace with it. Whenever one of the quiet indignities of aging would rear its ugly head, I would say “Oh that’s interesting. I guess that’s just a part of life now.” I wasn’t going to howl into the void or research cutting edge therapies designed to return me to my youth. No, the aches and pains, the gray hairs, and the fiber supplements were all taken in with nothing but a bemused smile.

All that being said, on my 40th birthday I decided it was probably a good time to just give myself a thorough once over in the mirror. I wasn’t looking to try to feel old or consider blepharoplasty, it was just a healthy check-in and maybe update the mental image I have of myself, which is still about 26. Unfortunately, I found something so alarming and horrifying that I don’t think I will ever recover from it:

A long eyebrow hair.

I can tell by the way you reread that last sentence that you perhaps don’t quite understand the gravity of the situation. There is no greater marker of being a thoroughly ancient and old person than to have overly long eyebrow hairs. Have you ever looked at an old man’s eyebrows? It’s like they just have regular head hair growing above their eyes with absolutely no regard for their station in life. It’s actually a scientific fact that you can measure the age of a man over 60 by how many wild eyebrow hairs he has and how long they are. It’s a very complicated mathematical formula though, like converting Celsius to Fahrenheit, so I won’t go into how it works.

Now I know I painted myself to be a very chill guy when it comes to aging and it seems uncharacteristic for me to be freaking out about a lone feral eyebrow hair.

BREAKING NEWS - In looking at my eyebrows again for this report, I found a second long eyebrow hair hiding behind the first! IT’S SPREADING.

This eyebrow situation bothers me for two reasons:

The first is that as I mentioned I am an old soul, but not THAT old. I think it’s probably more accurate to say I’m a middle aged soul that’s still fairly active and no one’s worried that he’s going to have a heart attack while shoveling the walk after a blizzard. The kind of soul that’s having a bit of a mid-life crisis, but starts a dad band instead of buying a fancy car or having an affair. The kind of soul that you turn to when you have a home repair question and you’re not confident enough to ask an associate at Lowe’s employee about it. Basically someone that a teenager would consider old.

Having crazy eyebrows means that my body is becoming older than my soul’s age, which is frightening. Does that mean I’m going to be a young soul? I do not want to be a young soul, even if only comparatively young. No one likes people who are young souls! They’re exhausting!

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want the eyebrows of a middle aged man who briefly considered getting a cool haircut. Instead, I’m now starting to develop the eyebrows of an elderly man who looks at a menu and his first thought is to check out the soups!

The second reason is that I don’t like the idea that my eyebrows are going rogue. At what point did they say “Enough is enough, we will be limited no longer! We will grow to our hearts’ content!”? Was it something I did? Are they rebelling against me? I think I have been very good to my eyebrows over the years. I haven’t plucked them or waxed them or anything. I’ve maybe combed them once or twice, but it was only when the situation was particularly dire and anarchy was threatening to rule the bottom of my brow. Surely, they would understand that the peace must be kept every now and again.

And another thing, what do they gain from no longer respecting the eyebrow growth limit? How do they benefit from this? It’s not like the longest eyebrow hairs get the most nutrients or something. If anything now they are forcing my hand to start trimming my eyebrows… Or is that really their game? Are these the type of eyebrows that long for the iron heel of a brutal, authoritarian regime? Are they hoping I might break out the beard trimmer and some of their more progressive brethren might become collateral damage? Oh, but this could cause an even greater revolt from the upstanding eyebrow hairs who are happy with their limits! I’m going to have to play this very carefully.

Honestly, this is all too much concern for one’s eyebrows. The only concern one should have for their eyebrows is that they keep sweat out of your eyes, generally look good, and are conveying the proper emotions. And also that you are able to pull off a respectable People’s Eyebrow every now and again.

Now look, I’ve done the research and I know it’s very common for 40 year olds to start getting wild eyebrow hairs, but my brain will always associate this with very old men and I’m just not ready to be very old. I just want to be a 42 year old man with the eyebrows of a 19 year old. Is that really too much to ask?