Where is the friendship?

I have no friends.

It's sad, but true.
You see... to me, a friend is someone who will tell you what you need to hear and not necessarily what you want to hear. They tell it like it is. Always. Because true friendship means being honest. A friend is someone you can always trust to have your back.
They will tell you that the dreamy guy you just met is trouble... Trouble with a capital T.
They tell you when your pants are too tight or too short or that that shade of lipstick makes you look like Morticia Adams on an extremely bad day.
They tell you it's time to get those eyebrows waxed again - because if you don't, the local Lepidopterologists are gonna come calling, having sniffed out some new species of caterpillar, growing right there on your face. (which reminds me... did you know that scientists have now proven that moths and butterflies can remember things from their caterpillar days? Amazing... but true. And totally useless unless you're a trivia freak. Or a Lepidopterologist)

Anyway... friends are people who will tell you the truth - no matter what - Isn't that right?

Now let me back up a bit and fill you in on some background here. Miz K (of the Mexican dinner / talking to grownups, post) was here this afternoon and we had a nice little 2-3 hour visit. Talking about this... talking about that... and eating some fish and chips and a corn-dog.
( I had the corn dog, which here in Oz, is actually called a Pluto Pup and tastes nothing like a real honest to goodness corn-dog, because there is no cornmeal in the darn thing and the dog is more of a skinny red sausage than a hot dog... but it's about the closest approximation to a corn-dog that you can get in this country. It tastes like sh**, but at least it's corn-dog shaped and you can dip it in mustard....and that counts for a lot when you're feeling nostalgic.)

Anyhow, Miz K and I sat across the table from each other - in broad , sunny daylight - and nattered and nibbled for hours... and it was lovely. It always is when Miz K is around. We smiled, we laughed, we talked about a whole range of things. And then she left.

It's one of those beautiful cool-ish, but the sunlight is golden, days and when I walked in the bathroom to put some towels away after Miz K left, I just happened to notice how the soft golden light was streaming through the bathroom windows and everything was softly illuminated in the wall mirror in there. So of course, I stopped to look at myself. Like you do. I hadn't looked at myself since this morning when I brushed my teeth, and most mornings, I do that in the almost dark, so keep from wasting electricity. So seeing myself clearly was kind of a nice surprise.
But this afternoon...because the light was so very clear, I noticed something about myself that I had never noticed before. And something that I almost wish I had never noticed, but thank goodness I did... in spite of the potential for future nightmares.

See, because the people that I had considered friends had never seen fit to mention this particular sight to me and were in fact, probably all huddled together at that exact moment, having a good old laugh at my expense - I was forced to come across this when I was all alone and at my most vulnerable. After eating a corn-dog and having a happy day..

You see, that clear light in the mirror showed a tiny little flaw on my neck. Something I had never thought I would see, unless my dear old Auntie Lou would somehow, miraculously, come back to life.
With her magnifying mirror in one hand and her Curex tweezers in the other.
I looked at this flaw on my neck and was totally gobsmacked, because I looked like a cross between my dear old Auntie Lou, and an aging Shirley Temple.

There... right there... on the right side of my neck, was a hair. A neck hair. And not just any old neck hair, but a hair about 4 inches long and curled like a Shirley Temple ringlet. A coil... a spring... a shortened, less colorful, almost grey version of my favorite childhood toy. A Slinky.

On
My
Neck !

You could tie a bow on this sucker.

I have been walking around for how long, with this coiled, springy, slinky-like"thing" sticking out of my neck, and NO one - especially my most beloved and trusted friends - has ever said a word?
It's not as if they couldn't see it. They must have known... and chosen to keep me in the dark.
So I ask you... wouldn't a real friend tell you something like this?

I should have asked for, or received some tweezers for Christmas... Because the people I have always considered to be my friends, knew that I needed them ... and they never said a word to me about it.
So do you want to know what I did? I didn't have any tweezers, but I still had that corn-dog stick. And I have to tell you, it worked like a charm... after I wound that hair about 27 times.
And yanked.

Nah... I would forgive Miz K just about anything.
And she probably never noticed a thing, because the light just wasn't right. :o)