Another graduate of the Drunk Gypsy School of Cosmetology.

It's my birthday, and I'm having a 100% necessary glass of wine right now. Having finished my end-of-semester grading yesterday, I had the day off work and decided to seize the day by getting my oil changed, which I should have done a few months ago, and paying a stranger to rip out some hair on my face with hot wax, which I haven't done in months because a) we're in a recession, and b) I'm anglo-saxon.

I drove my car to the nearest Jiffy Lube without incident. And that's the least I expect from it after having to dump several hundred dollars and five days of work into it. Two pages into the old magazine I was reading, a Jiffy Lube employee tells me my car won't start.

And then it does. You have to push the clutch down. That's the key.

So then I went to the salon to get my hairs ripped out. And that turned out to be a ten-minute sadomasochistic experiment in the limits of human pain.

I guess I was wincing a little because my waxer said, "I haven't even started yet."

"I know that, but you're pressing on my eye."

It got worse when my nose ring got caught in the towel she dragged roughly across my face for no reason whatsoever. I don't have that much hair anywhere on my face, so I am still confused as to why she was acting like she was brushing a rug.

I opened my eyes at several points during this process, in an effort to appear nonchalant. Plus, in the event that she was actually trying to hurt me, I thought maybe I could make amends with a closed-mouth polite smile. But my vision was blurry with tears.

I let the tears stream down my face to clear my vision. Why was this taking so long, and, sweet mother of God, why is my whole forehead in searing pain?

Because she was scraping scissors across my face.

When she didn't use the post-wax aloe, opting instead to send me home pissed off, inflamed, and possibly cut up like the Joker, that was the final straw for me.

I didn't tip.