I Just Wanted to Tell You That.

As I was driving Ian to church youth group Wednesday night, we chatted comfortably in the car. He shared how a girl at school had actually taken notice of him the preceding week. It was either the beginning or end of a class, and he was standing by a desk talking to another boy. A girl he didn't really know made her way through the throng of kids, straight up to him, clearly eager to tell him something. While periodically shushing the other boy who was obliviously trying to continue his conversation with Ian, she started sharing. "I know some people with eyebrows, but you got it down - bushy and straight across your head." Ian said he just looked at her. He didn't know what to say. So, she concluded with, "I just wanted to tell you that," and walked away.

With his story finished, Ian couldn't hold it together any longer and just broke up, laughing so hard he was doubled over and speechless. Of course, I was laughing too, though I tried not to double up so I could keep my eyes, teary though they were, on the road. When we were capable of speech once more, we discussed this interaction a little further. Ian didn't think the girl meant anything unkind by her words. She is African-American, and we wondered if maybe unibrows weren't common among African-Americans so maybe she found his particularly intriguing? We also talked about how the genes of my bushy eyebrows and David's very light unibrow have united in a special way in him.

This is not the first time he has gotten comments on his unibrow. A year or 2 ago, school kids started noticing, and the comments started coming. He always found it mildly irritating whenever a kid would inform him of the arrangement of his eyebrows - or should I say eyebrow? - as if their new discovery would be news to him. In this case, though, Ian wasn't irritated at all.

Afterward I thought to myself, of all the ways he could have responded to this girl's bold pronouncement, his was definitely among the healthier options.