a mustachioed life; Part 1: a very hairy christmas

Contrary to popular belief (and in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary), I have, in fact, successfully completed puberty....even though my only solid proof of this rite of passage are the mental scars of my ongoing battle with moderate acne and a brief stint with a Theo Huxtable-esque mustache. A word of advice to the ladies: If you ever find yourself in this precarious situation, DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT tackle this problem with Sally Hanson's Cream Hair Bleach. You will only succeed in a Spencer Pratt-esque mustache...trust: this is not an improvement. I'm not sure what my 14-year-old thought process was, but luckily, I quickly realized that trying to trick people into thinking that my upper lip was of Norwegian descent was decidedly not the answer....and by "realized" I mean: "Christmas of '96".
Let me explain: Literally every year since I can remember my sister and I were given the EXACT same thing in our stockings. We even had a tradition of sneaking downstairs before my parents woke up to carefully sort and synchronize the unwrapping of our identically shaped gifts so as to avoid ruining the surprise for the other. This particular year, however, was a bit different [dun, dun, duuuuun]. While sorting our gifts we quickly came to the realization that our parents had decided to personalize one of our stocking gifts (!!!). Surely the only reasonable thing to do was to save this special and unique gift (that would likely be handed down to our own daughters one day) as the grand finale. Quickly working our way through our dual-gifts we finally came to our individualized stocking stuffers. Excitedly, I tore mine open to reveal what was, approximately, a 50 gallon drum of microwavable.facial.wax. from Sally Beauty Supply. NOT EVEN KIDDING. (At the time, I was so immersed in my own mortification that I can't exactly recall what my sister's "special" gift was, but to my recollection, it was a coffee mug proclaiming, "my pituitary gland knows I'm female!!!" or something to that effect.) I was horrified. It was the gifting equivalent of a drive-by shooting. [side note: I take heart in that I'm not the only victim of my mother's generosity -- we had a German exchange student that came home one day to find a stick of deodorant lying on her bed. "danke".]

To my mom's credit, the 50 gallon drum o' wax was put to good use throughout the remainder of puberty....and by the "remainder of puberty" I clearly mean "I meticulously scour my upper lip for any trace of hair in a magnifying mirror regularly".