Issue link: http://latinschool.uberflip.com/i/686133
grandmother's tree in sunny Tucson, Arizona. Upon eating the fruit, Spencer complained of tingling lips to our teacher, who reassured him that this was a normal side effect of citrus fruit. It wasn't. Spencer had a severe allergic reaction and was sent to the hospital. He missed a week of school. From kumquats – who'd a thunk it? Around that time, I went to a sleepover at my friend Nathan's house. It was large, old and smelled a bit like rotting wood, but in a good way. e house was haunted-mansiony; it always reminded me of the spooky castle in the theme song of the original Scooby Doo. Actually, later that year, they found bats in the house and the whole family had to suffer through rabies shots in their stomachs for, like, three months. With needles being my most crippling fear, I cannot recall visiting Nathan's house after that incident. Anyways, floorboards would creak with every step and the house echoed of barks from two huge, slobbery Great Danes, whose hair I would find in every corner. We were sitting in a dimly-lit, musty room on the upper level of the house where we would frequently play video games. ere wasn't a couch in front of the thick TV, however, and we would usually just sit on the somewhat-dusty wooden floor. But that day, for whatever reason, there was a folding table in the room: mahogany, with metal legs, and a lightly cushioned top. I was sitting on the table, and Nathan was sitting under it. His older sister Sophie was there too, swiveling around in a black office chair. We were talking about the differences in drama between the fourth and seventh grades. In Sophie's grade, the popular kids played sports while in my grade they did not necessarily. is information may not have been wholly accurate as Nathan and I were perhaps a little unaware of our social standings. I noticed Sophie was staring at me above my eyes, but below my forehead and I think I knew what was coming. As she pretty much begged me to let her pluck my eyebrows, I silently sat on the table hoping she would stop. Sophie told me she had done it to herself before, and that she had tweezers, and that it wouldn't hurt at all. en she pointed to the bathroom where she would pluck my eyebrows. It was in the corner of the dim room with its door open. Brightly lit and tiled, it contrasted heavily with its surroundings. I knew that in Sophie's mind she was being accommodating, but that somehow only made it worse, like she felt that she needed to help me. I was hesitant and refused, mostly afraid of the pain, but I was also embarrassed in front of myself. is was when I learned that it was not Spencer's poor eyesight that made him see my eyebrows as large, but it was my eyebrows that made him see them that way. And it was his lack of a filter that gave me a new insecurity. Which was weird because I had worse things to be insecure about like: • a stunning lack of athletic ability • how often I would cry • really big Jewish hair. My mom is and was pretty into cosmetics, so I asked her what to do to fix my eyebrow situation. I approached her in the kitchen, and across the granite-topped island, she told me calmly that my eyebrows made me manly. "Right Cati?" she asked, hinting at her to comfort me. Cati was a nice, young Slovakian woman who used to help my mom around the house on Fridays. Cati assured me that only the manliest men in her country had big eyebrows. is encounter did not do very much for reassurance, mainly because most of my friends and I did not live in Slovakia. I asked my dad what to do, and he told me that he also had big eyebrows growing up. I never noticed that his brows were so big, but upon looking at him again, I realized my dad would do very well with Slovakian women. He showed me an old picture of himself in his high school football uniform, his Jew-fro high and his eyebrows prominent, and told me that growing up, he was called "the Monobrow Man." It was then that I had to accept that the size of my eyebrows was a permanent deal. As I've gotten older, my eyebrows have grown on me, literally and metaphorically, but you know, not to the point where I would say something like "oh they make me who I am today." However I have to pretend that I'm totally secure with them to maintain my sanity. Because I know that my eyebrows are the first thing people notice about me when they meet me. And I know that I'm referred to as some variant of "the kid with the eyebrows" by those who don't know my name. And I know the way my sister made friends at our high school was by comparing my eyebrows to caterpillars in order to make some girls laugh. Because I have to chuckle and say thank you when elderly people, trying to be endearing, say, "look at the eyebrows on you!" Because I come so close to just shaving them off every time I do improv and my scene-partner, desperate for something to say, takes a look at my face and says "eyebrows." But I guess that's the way it works. We all have something we don't like about ourselves that we wish we could change even though we can't. And if we don't accept our societally-diagnosed flaw, we have to at least pretend that we do. We like to think our society embraces individuality, but somewhere deep down we know it doesn't. While this may sound depressing, it is. But hey, if I get tired of pretending, I can always move to Slovakia. Where do my eyebrows stand? Probably around a 'Eugene Levy.'" Latin Magazine » Fall 2015 17