The Unibrow

My eyebrow merits a very prominent place in my adolescence.  I didn’t just have your run of the mill unibrow where someone’s eyebrows meet in the middle.  I had heavy brows and my unibrow was like a dark bird of prey in permanent flight above my eyes.  I was terribly self-conscious about it.  As puberty and adolescence progressed it had the effect of filling in my unibrow with thick, dark brown hair.   Think of spring when the rains come and the grass which was a faded yellow becomes a vibrant green.  That is the effect that puberty had on my unibrow.  I resembled a not too distant descendant of the wolfman.  My oldest sister suggested that I let her pluck them out but for some reason I was horrified by that thought.  I think my mindset was that it was less than manly to pull out the hair, but good Lord she should have insisted.  In fact, there should have been a family intervention.  Perhaps the school should have sent a notice home mandating that my unibrow be addressed before I would be admitted back to class.  But alas, none of that occurred.  This probably also explains my painfully shy way with girls at the time.  It wasn’t until I was 18 that I finally said enough was enough and declared war on the unibrow.  It was a long and hard campaign.  It took over six months of regular visits to an electrolysis to slay the beast.  Little jabbing jolts of electricity between my eyes for sessions of 30-60 minutes in the summer of 1993 was what it took to bring me out of the Cro-Magnon era.  Good times. 

Most kids become self-conscious of their appearance at age 13-14 and that was certainly the case with me.  My goodness, I can remember the horror of having a pimple and scrambling to find the Oxy-10 with the desperate hope that the stupid cream would wipe out the pimple in the 30 minutes before I’d arrive at school.  Since my skin was fair, whenever those red blemishes would emerge, they would really stand out.  I would do most anything to avoid people seeing them.  I would lean my head against my hand to cover the blotches.  I would angle my head or face to one side to hide those cosmetic blights.  You see, in spite of my unibrow I was still a narcissist of the highest order.   Appearances were of the utmost importance!  Hair styles were also very important and by 8^th grade I had adopted a flat-top.  Tight on the sides and about one and a half inches on top.  Hair was very, very important and as the year wore on my flat-top became more and more edgier, the sides became tighter to where it was almost shaved on the sides.  Once 1989 rolled around there was a point where I had two lines shaved in on both sides of my head.  Where would I go to get my customized flat-top?  June’s Barbershop on Irving Park Road.  June was this older Filipino man who ran a barbershop on Irving between California and Kedzie.  He was a machine.  There were few words once he motioned you to the chair.  This wasn’t some kind of stereotypical barbershop where people were talking and it was some kind of social hangout.  June was all business.  He would take about 10 minutes, but he was meticulous and careful.  He charged $10 at the time and it was money well spent.  I always felt sharp coming out of June’s.

The clientele at June’s was mostly Hispanic and there was (still is) a significant Latino population and influence in the area.  This was reflected in our class as well.  Out of the thirteen kids in 7^th and 8^th grade there were six who came from Latino backgrounds.  This would have a major influence on my adolescence, and I saw that in a mostly positive way.  I was the minority in this setting and it was ok.  In fact, looking back I embraced the multicultural aspect of my circumstances.  But there was no conscious thought given to it at the time.  It’s just how it was, and it was great.   While there was a major Hispanic presence at the school it’s not as if the kids were speaking Spanish.  Hell, Danny and Meredith couldn’t speak Spanish and I’m not sure that Tim could either.  I think that the best way I could sum up and describe the culture was that it was diverse and urban.  There was no single, predominant culture like there would be when I went to high school in Pittsburgh.