Bravery & Sephora

In exactly one month, I’ll be 42.

I don’t wear a lot of makeup but I recently mustered up the bravery required and walked into Sephora and walked out with a forty dollar tube of concealer. Bravery required you may be asking yourself...well once, I had a truly horrible and humiliating experience there with an eighteen year old and have avoided it since. Anyway, I walked in like a tourist trying to get my bearings and was met by a young woman with blonde cascading curls and massive dark eyelashes.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

I stepped back in an attempt to avoid her eyelashes.

“I’m looking for something that will hide the dark circles under my eyes.”

She observed me. I felt like a specimen under her microscope. She paused, then turned on her sky high heels (heels high enough that if I attempted to walk in, would result in a spectacular fall followed by a trip to the emergency department).

“Follow me.”

Head down I followed her.

“Try this,” she said, pulling out a tube the size of Crazy Glue. Using a Q-tip, she deposited a glob under one of my eyes. “Now dab it in.”

I started dabbing away like someone who I was hoping, looked like they knew what they were doing.

“Use your ring finger,” Miss eyelashes snapped.

I paused to look at my offending finger.

I started again with what I hoped was my ring finger. This process was taking a while.

“Now you’re rubbing. Dab…Like this.” She took over. “There, do you see how much better you look?”

I squinted into the mirror. I saw one partially-obscured semicircle. It reminded me of when you draw a picture and try to correct your mistake. The pencil is pressed so hard that even when you erase it, the original line is still visible, albeit slightly smudged and worn. Like me.

“I’ll take it,” I said quickly as I was eager to make my escape as the bad memories from my last visit started to overwhelm me.

“Can I interest you in anything else?” she asked, waving her perfectly manicured nails around. “Perhaps some moisturizer? Anti-wrinkle serum?”

“Not today, thank you” I muttered.

After I arrive home, I remove the product from its excess packaging and for the first time, notice that it's called "Extreme Camouflage" Cream. Apparently, the heavy-duty equipment’s been called out. I’m going into battle.


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