The lone hair was long and black and ugly. Plus it itched. When Chet couldn’t get a firm grip on it, he found the tweezers and tried to yank it out. He tugged, winced from the pinch, and nada. After trying and failing a few times he managed to make some headway. But it wasn’t coming out by its roots like a normal nose hair. He yanked and it would give a millimeter. A bit more. Thick and black and nasty looking like a black mamba snake seen on shrooms. Now Chet held the tweezers an inch from his face, wary of pulling too quickly, because who knew what would happen? He reached for a yellow pencil and began to roll the hair around it. Chet rolled for a few minutes, the hair giving a little, like a game fish gone to the bottom, and then it would give a little more and he’d roll and roll and soon the TICONDEROGA 2 was lost in snotty black hair.
Chet glanced at the wall clock. He was going to be late if he didn’t end this ugly hair business and get on with his shower. How had this happened? Why him? He rolled the pencil some more, between his thumbs and index fingers. The pencil wasn’t rolling freely. There was some real tension. He paused. Wandered into the bathroom. Couldn’t bear to glance in the mirror. Rested his right hand and then plinked the hair like you would a harp. He laughed. Had he expected a melody?
Now he was really late for work. He almost wished he had zits again or something you could pop. Longed for that sense of end game, some satisfaction. The ugly black nose hair wasn’t providing squat. Just another time suck. He imagined that it was attached to his heart, his liver, his gonads. Exasperated, he rummaged through his kit bag until he had the tiny silver scissors and snapped the hair off halfway between his nose and the pencil.
He didn’t look at the pencil. He dropped that nasty business into the trashcan by the sink. Chet focused on the mirror. The black hair was changing color. A bit more gray. If this was a cartoon his ears would be closing the longer he tugged, or his nose would cave in and the subsequent sinkhole would swallow his features. Instead, the ugly grayish hair hung limp about 3” down his face. Chet imagined a new career—trimming nose hair at Mount Rushmore. He plunged the scissors into the crevice along the nostril canal and clipped. The hair dropped into the sink sans loud cartoon clang. Sound effects were everything. Chet bent his head, eyeballed the nostril, and could just see the obstinate hair poking around the septum. He thrust the scissors in deep and snipped again. Got you.
Resting both hands on the sink Chet exhaled. Man, he hated Mondays. When he noticed the other nostril the tiny scissors fell into the sink with a proper clank.
