My sister-in-law Gloriosa is gorgeous. Always has been. She was a gorgeous baby; then she was a gorgeous toddler, a gorgeous little girl and a gorgeous teenager.
She is so used to it, she don’t think about it much. People have always stared at her. She just goes about her business.
But every now and then, she focuses on her looks. She got a bump on her face, so she goes in to the skin doctor to check it out. It turns out to be a pimple, but this doctor (I will call him Dr. Scambola, so I don’t get sued) tells her that it is time for her to start getting Botox to get rid of her (non-existent) wrinkles. Botox only last three months, so how can it hurt?
So, $200 and six injections later, he is telling her to make “extreme” faces in the car home so it would “distribute and look natural.”
She definitely did not look natural on the way home.
She was going through a school zone, nice and slow, making faces in the rearview mirror – wrinkling her forehead and gritting her teeth and puffing out her cheeks. No wonder the cop noticed her.
He decides she must be having a stroke.
He stops her, and asks her is she is all right, and she looks up at him, perfectly normal, and says she is fine, thank you. He wonders if HE is the one having the stroke.
She walks into her house still making faces and her kids all shriek and run away. Finally, she gets them calmed down, explains about the Botox, and makes them promise to not tell Daddy – partly because of the $200, and partly because she wants to see if he notices any difference, once the Botox is distributed.
When he gets home and is rummaging through the refrigerator for his pre-supper snack, she walks into the kitchen and asks him if he notices anything different. He peers up out the snack drawer and and says, “Umm. Your bra seems a little tight.”
So THAT’S what he looks at. MEN!
She calls the doctor the next day, and talks to his assistant, whose name is Titlyn. Gloriosa says she don’t see no difference with this Botox, so Titlyn schedules her another appointment in two weeks.
“I wasn’t here when you came in before,” she says. “Are you the one worried about your turkey wattle?” “TURKEY WATTLE?” Gloriosa screeches. “Yes. Because there’s a nice exercise for that. Kiss the sky. Put your head back and go ‘Mwah!’ Do it as often as you can. It’s a lovely exercise.” Gloriosa thanks her and goes it the bathroom and looks at her neck, then the ceiling, and goes “Mwah.”
She is still doing it when she gets into the car. She opens up her sun roof, so she can actually see the sky, and goes “Mwah!” whenever she can.
And then she goes through the school zone, and that same cop is there. He stops her again. “Lady, what are you doing? School kids crossing the street aren’t up in the sky!”
She fixes him with her devastating smile. “I am sooo sorry! I know better. Just give me a ticket. I deserve it.” Of course, he don’t. She never got a ticket in her life. But he does ask her what she thought she was doing.
She explains about turkey wattle and kissing the sky.
He turns back into a cop. “First thing, you ain’t got no turkey wattle. Not even a chicken wattle.
“Second, you keep kissing the sky like that and you’ll get bird poop in your mouth. What doctor you been going to?”
She tells him. “Hmm,” he says. “Maybe that’s the skin doctor we got under investigation. (He is making this up.) Probably you shouldn’t go to him no more.”
That afternoon, when she fusses at her kids for something, they all just giggle. That NEVER happened before. Then she remembers – her forehead is frozen. She can’t scowl at them.
She has lost her power.
She calls Titlyn and cancels all further appointments.
If it’s a choice between beauty and power, power wins.
