Mustachioed

Over the weekend someone told me that my blog is starting to get depressing. I tried to explain the concept of "Tears of a Clown," but she brushed that off and suggested I write about something...anything. She suggested I write about all of the "perks" that she assumed came with having a mustache at 10. So here goes...

There were no perks. The "I have a mustache before everyone else" perks don't begin until junior high school. That's when I started having 16 year old girls hitting on my 12 year old self, only I was completely stupid back then. "I'm only 12" still echoes in my head to this day, and every single time I hear it I want to go back in time and slap myself.

Anyway...as I was saying, there were no perks. The peach fuzz started shortly after fourth grade. Back then, people just assume that you're dirty. "Did your mama water get cut off or something? Why your face dirty?" I had a substitute send me to the bathroom because she thought I had on makeup.

Sidebar: Remember when the networks used to play movies on Sundays or sometimes during the week? I think Fox used to play two or three movies back to back on Sunday afternoons. They called it the Triple Feature. Well, back then they used to play the hell out of Teen Wolf.

Once all the kids figured out I wasn't dirty, they started calling me a werewolf. I was an easy target. I was ten years old in the fifth grade with a mustache and size 10 mens shoe. Little did they know, the hair was starting to appear other places as well, and without a man around to talk to, I didn't know what the hell was going on. That human sexuality class with the light blue/pink pamphlets and the weird looking kids on the front was a year away. I wasn't stupid. I knew that men had mustaches, but I figured it was supposed to start way later...like 20. I assumed I was broken. I had to fix myself.

The hair in other places had started a few months prior. A pair of scissors and a few band aids later...I was back to normal. That wasn't an option, however, for the hair on my face. It was too low. I tried washing my face a lot, hoping that the hair would dry out and fall off. That brilliant idea came from a Salon Selectives commercial that talked about "other leading shampoos" drying out hair and causing split ends.

Eventually, I found a box in the basement with my uncle's old stuff in it. There was a rusty razor in there. I didn't know that the stuff men put on their face was shaving cream. I thought it was soap. I took some Ivory soap and applied it ALL OVER MY FACE.  Then I started shaving. Left to right, up and down...pretty much any direction that can cause lacerations.

Then I accidentally cut off a part of my eyebrow. Now how did I get all the way up there? Well, I saw faint baby hairs on the side of my brow. I just assumed they were mustaches in wait. So I tried to get those too. Since I cut one eyebrow, I had to even it out on the other side, only I made that one too narrow. I had to make them even, and eventually they were. The only problem was that they looked like dots on an "i" by that point. I cut them both off completely and prayed to God that no one would notice.

I don't remember exactly what my mother said when she got home. It took her a minute to notice though. I remember that. I do remember my grandmother telling me that I was too stupid for my own good. I also remember the praying the whole weekend that they'd grow back by Monday. I kept putting conditioner and that blue hair grease that my mother had on my face hoping that it would speed up the process.

If you thought they had jokes before, you should've seen my classmates that Monday.

Next time on MentalStorage, we'll talk about how puberty-stricken-me came up with the idea to put baking soda under his arms to stop the sweating...or maybe we won't.