By Haley Weaver, intern extraordinaire for MichelleintheMiddle.com
In sixth grade, my mom and I agreed on most things- I would take the bus to and from school, and she would take me to swim practice. While I set the table four days a week, she would take requests for dinner (which meant a lot of macaroni and cheese). In fact, we were on the same page on just about everything… except make up.
Most of my friends at school were beginning to rim their eyelids with black liner and coat their lips in hot pinks and sparkles while I carried around lip balm (in case of emergency). I begged my mom to let me get one, just one, of the products lining the walls of CVS, desperate to sport the mature face of middle school. This topic introduced a few heated discussions before we came to yet another typical Haley-Mom agreement: I could get a few cosmetics if I went to Aveda and learned how to apply it properly (looking back, I think she just wanted me to avoid raccoon eyes, and for this, I am grateful). I willingly accompanied her to the mall that weekend to endure the pain for my personal gain.
Here’s where the story takes a turn. Aveda is in the middle of our mall, with windows allowing shoppers to peek into the store. Of course, the chairs in which customers got their makeovers were lined next to this pane of glass, and I was front and center. To make matters worse, the woman doing my makeup (let’s call her Cruella) clipped my hair back with clunky barrettes and condescendingly showed me how to apply lip-gloss. I was beyond irritated, and I looked at my mom for help, but to my dismay, I saw that our neighbor and her seventh grade daughter from my bus stop had just walked in.
“Haley, are you going to prom?” the girl asked before laughing hysterically, a joke only someone under the age of thirteen would find entertaining. Of course, this humiliated me beyond means and my cheeks flushed red (on the bright side, this probably accompanied my lips well). Fortunately, she and her mother were in a rush, and they were gone. I willed the makeup artist to just stop in my head, but unfortunately, she was now explaining what mascara was, and I knew I had a long time before I could escape. This is when another one of my mom’s friends walked in, excited to recognize my mother from outside the store. She smiled warmly at me, and I kid you not, said, “makeup already? Aren’t you in fourth grade?” That was it. I gave my mom a very disgruntled look, which she fortunately understood. We bought the lip-gloss and got out before Cruella could implement her torturous eye-lash curler on me.
The next day at the bus stop was rough. In true middle school form, my seventh grade neighbor told the other kids all about me at the make up counter, and they all laughed at me, but hey, my mom let me pick out a few other products at Walgreens that afternoon, and even though I abused black eyeliner for a while, I eventually learned how to enhance rather than cover, and more importantly, I learned that even the most embarrassing moments can reap benefits.
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