Hurting: Eyebrow

Many years ago, Richard and I were invited to a junior-high youth retreat to give a short entertaining presentation on a passage from the Bible. So we drove together to Alliance Redwoods retreat site, and we were prepping our props in the back of the sanctuary.

I had brought with me a bag of costumes and props, such as mustaches, nerdy glasses, gray sweats for Hans and Franz, etc.. One of the staple props that I brought was a roll of black electric tape, because they can easily be used to make mustaches.

As we were messing around with the props in the back, Richard proceeded to take 2 pieces of the black tape and put it on his eyebrows. Then he moved his eyebrows with funny facial expressions, hilariously causing his eyebrow movements to be accentuated by the tape. We snickered in the back.

As I was laughing, I told him, "Hey Richard, be careful when you take it off, or you will rip your eyebrows off."

I don't know why Richard thought that I was joking. I was quite serious -- although I was laughing. I knew that eyebrows come off easily, but it seemed like Richard didn't know that...

With a mocking look on his face, he said, "You mean like this?" and he pressed the tape on to his eyebrows harder, as if to mock my warning.

Then before I could warn him and tell him that I was serious, he took a hold of one end of the black tape, and then quickly ripped off the tape. As it came off, it made a frightening "riiiiiiipp!" sound, and we both immediately looked down at the sticky side of the tape... where we found half of Richard's left eyebrow, perfectly preserved on the tape.

Richard held his hand over where his eyebrow used to be, and he ran into the bathroom to see what the damage was. I wanted to follow him to the bathroom to console him, but I couldn't move from that spot, because I was on the floor, barely surviving because I was running out of breath from laughing.