UPDATE: ready, set, die awkwardly

Yesterday, I was got my nose waxed! 

If you have never done it, you're missing out. It is basically the most amazing thing you can do to your face. You don't have to worry about little hairs peeking out when you're talking to someone cute that you may want to see naked at some point in the future and afterwards you feel like this is how God truly intended you breathe. 

Also, you don't have to worry about stabbing yourself in the brain with a small pair of scissors when you're almost murdered in your bathroom.

Yeah.... that last part... I may or may not be absolutely terrified of the bathroom. Or more accurately, what can happen to you while you're in the bathroom.

Sure, most people see it as a place to do your 'business', clean yourself, purchase low-grade tampons, text your friends, and, quite possibly, read this blog, but I see it as basically a death trap. A very awkward death trap. Which is why I try to spend as little time as possible in the bathroom. Each trip is like a race against death. So, yeah, sometimes I DON'T wash my hands when it's just #1. Sue me! I'm sorry I want to meet my grandchildren 10th generation litter of hoarders cats!

Ever since I was a child and involuntarily saw selected scenes of Stephen King's It, that other guy's Psycho, and pretty much any movie where people are in the bathroom, I have been wary of it.

For starters, it is usually a very small space. There is no where to run, and your best means of self defense would be giving your would-be axe murderer or face rapist a swirlie. And, being a private, personal place, when there, you are 7 times out of 10 completely alone. The other 3 out of 10 being taking recreational drugs, telling secrets, or some weird toilet fetish stuff that I'm sure exists because if you can imagine it, there is porn for it. I mean, that's like the Law of the Internet.

The biggest thing that makes the bathroom terrifying is that you are ALWAYS naked or semi-naked.  There are few fears in this world that parallel the anxiety I feel when pooping. I mean, could you be in a more awkward position?! Pants around your ankles, iPhone in hand, and in no position to mount a defense of any kind. I mean, I guess if the person who busted into the room was a rapist, he would be sorely disappointed and so turned off I probably saved myself from that assault. But even a non-threatening intruder is terrible. If you've ever almost or completely walked in on someone actively pooping, you've heard the fear.

"SOMEONE'S IN HERE!!!" 

"JUST A SECOND!" 

"OOHMMYYYGAAAWD CLOSE THE DOOR!"

Then there's the shower. If you've never imagined a snake, blood, or Crypt Keeper hand coming from your shower drain, you clearly need a lot less therapy than me. Feel proud! For as long as I can remember, I have never allowed my back to face the shower drain. You know when you're in bed and you don't let a limb hang off the edge because that's exactly the moment a monster will see it and drag you under the bed to be his underworld queen!

Yeah, thanks for those nightmares, Fred Savage.

It's the same principle. The moment I turn my back to that drain is the same moment my fate is sealed and then the coroner's report will detail my untimely death's half shaven legs, cheap bathroom products, and 'Maybe' from the Annie Soundtrack on repeat blasting in the background.

Much to my roommate's chagrin, this is the primary reason I listen to music in the shower. 1) Singing along to the best of Kelly Clarkson, the SMASH soundtrack, and/or Taylor Swift, distracts me just enough to actually take a shower, and 2) I feel like it serves as a warning. I mean, clearly a murder/rapist/Jehovah's Witness, would turn off 'Since U Been Gone' before assaulting me with a knife or pamphlet. I mean, you just can't strangle someone to death with America's pop/rock princess hitting high notes in the background!

My final point more closely relates to my initial thought of nose-waxing. It is very dangerous to be  scared when there is some sort of foreign object inside one or more of your orifices! Not in a dirty way. Honestly! I mean 'a toothbrush here a tweezer there' sort of situation. 

Before I discovered nose waxing, I would either pluck stray hairs or stand scared in the corner of my bathroom with a small pair of scissor shoved halfway up my nostrils. I scare easily, and being in a vulnerable place, the bathroom, I feel like the LAST thing I need to do is overreact while something that sharp is inside my face. The same principle applies to tweezing of eyebrows, Q-tipping of ear wax, and brushing my teeth. Which is why either brush my teeth in the shower or whilst walking around the parts of my house that are far less rapey. Like the kitchen. Who gets raped in the kitchen!? 

All in all, I try to spend as little time as possible in the bathroom. And basically this blog is my justification for why I shampoo/condition, shave, brush my teeth, and pee in the shower ALL THE TIME. It's personal survival.

It's downright Darwinian dammit!

UPDATE: Yesterday's nose waxing was more intense than many previous ones. Most likely, because the esthetician was Asian this time and not one of the white instructors at hair school. Anyway, my now bare nose had an unforeseen side-effect.

Remember in Thor when Chris Hemsworth finally gets his hammer back? Well the removal of almost all of my nose hairs and my sense of smell was a lot like that! While one may be excited to smell fresh cut summer grass or the rain that Dallas is expecting today, one might also smell disgusting people at the gym in the early morning hours.

There was an older-ish man had the WORST body odor ever. I mean, I know it is a gym and people are working out and therefore sweating. But most of the time the worst BO I catch involuntary whiffs of smell more like a moderately obese child just came in from recess in May. This guy smelled like he was smuggling feta stuffed weasel corpses in his underwear.

This guy seriously needed some Axe or pre-shower in a bad way. Kind of like when you go to a public pool and pre-shower... Or is it after?! I have no idea, because I always skipped that step. Because, 1) getting wet before you're about to get wet is a ridiculous notion (and kind of dirty sounding) and 2) being murdered in a public shower is definitely not how I want my obituary to read.

perm-a-doodle

These are some of the things I hear on a semi-regular basis:

'Oh, somebody went to the club last night!'

'Did you get bored and doodle on yourself?'

'OMG, do you bathe? That thing has been on your arm for a week!'

'Did you get that in prison!?!?'

'You paid for that???'

'No. Really?'

And with great shock (and an unusual amount of rage): 'WHAT THE F**K?!??!'

Unfortunately all of these exclamations aren't in response to some sort of awesome battle scar from a meth-ed out bar fight, a respectably butch wound from a sports related injury, or even a disgusting birth mark. It's in response to my "tattoo." After you see the picture, you'll understand why I used the air-quotes. Only someone with a very low IQ or the worst taste ever would actually call this a tattoo. 


Here it is:

My best friend's sister calls it my 'Perm-A-Doodle.'

Feel instantly better about yourself and your life decisions thus far? You should. Other than getting knocked up by an unemployed, "DJ", with jacked up teeth and credit, I think it is one of the worst permanent thing that can happen to a impressionable young college student.

It was one of best friend's 21st birthdays, but unfortunately the big day fell during my university's spring break. My friend worked and I had a short vacation that year. Being a college town through and through, my friend and I were basically alone.

To help her ring in her special day, we went to a basically empty bar on a street usually bustling with young co-eds just getting their starter-DUIs. We drank a lot and somewhere around last call we decided it would be awesome to get matching tattoos!

This was pre-iPhone, so we actually had to call 4-1-1 for the numbers of any and all tattoo shops that were still open. Turns out, lucky #5 proved the winner open. Red Flag #1 + 2: it was after 2 AM and the "shop" was located on 34th Street and Hepatitis Avenue.

We loaded up our loaded selves into a Honda Element and drove over with dreams of beautiful B.F.F. tattoos! Red Flag #3: Us: "Hi, we want matching tattoos!" Scary looking tattoo shop worker: "I normally only do piercings." Us: "That's OK!"

He reluctantly agreed (probably Red Flag #4) and began to scribble the most pathetic looking peace sign I've ever barely remember seeing. We signed no waivers and proceeded to the back.

She went first. When the piercing guy was done I saw it. (Red Flag #5). It was too late for me though... We had made a drunken pact, her tattoo was done, and she was also my ride home. And, frankly, getting raped and/or offered some very low quality crack in one of the seedier parts of Lubbock, Texas didn't seem like acceptable alternatives.

As we drove home, we convinced each other it was the right thing to do. "Oh, I kind of like that it is imperfect. I mean no peace isn't perfect." I was a philosophy major at the time, and it felt like the perfect intellectual bulls**t to console a forever scarred idiot.

Nowadays, I hardly notice it until someone asks me if I get bored a lot and draw on myself. But I kind of like it, because it reminds me of my dear friend, and it is a constant reminder not to do something stupid like sign up to do a mud-run, turn down any venue that offers any sort of 'all-you-can-eat' or leave home without my phone.  

To be filed under things my tattoo reminder has NOT stopped me from doing: texting after 2 AM and/or 2 bottles of wine, continuously watching all three of the Transformers films (or any other film by Michael Bay for that matter), emotionally substituting take-out Pei Wei and hoarded Girl Scout cookies for a Friday night social life or boyfriend, and listening to that 'Call Me Maybe' song.

PS - My friend is working on starting her second successful business and just married a great guy. The most exciting or 'successful' thing I have done of late is see the Avengers. She must take this stupid reminder a lot more seriously than me...