"You Should Have Come Earlier, It Wouldn't Hurt So Much"

I will never be mistaken for an early adopter. Yes, yes, I was comfortable with using computers as soon as they replaced typewriters, and I have kept a journal since 1967, and when the USG introduced an optional new retirement system back in 1986 or so that featured the government version of a 401k called the Thrift Savings Plan, I jumped on it with both feet. And then when we moved to New York in 2005 we dropped our landline telephone service in favor of using cell phones only, which still gets some quizzical responses here in the land of the 212 area code, when I say mine is 202. People think you have, as Nixon's press secretary Ron Ziegler used to do, "misspoken."

You get the picture -- far from a luddite, clearly not cutting edge. So it was out of character that back in 1993 while living in El Salvador, I began getting facials, not exactly a mainstream thing for guys at the time, let alone guys in El Salvador. I like to say that I keep hoping (stupid joke alert!) for a new face, but alas it never happens. But pretty much every three months since then I have repaired to the closest salon to wherever I am residing and get the creams slathered on, the steam across the pores, and the quarter hour or so of what are discreetly called "extractions." When we lived in Chile there once was a billboard campaign for a Nivea product that featured a perky young senorita saying, "Chau, puntitos." If only...

Anyway, when I went this week the extractions were proceeding with some wincing on my part when the cosmetologist -- originally, to judge from her accented English from central Europe -- said, "You should have come earlier, it wouldn't hurt so much." And, I thought, "what...if I hadn't been ten minutes late for my appointment, you would have been gentler?" I was all insulted by this mini-Marathon Man torturer until I realized, crossing the street just after the appointment, that what she really meant was that I should have come sooner, not letting so much time elapse between appointments. Point taken, even if the choice of vocabulary was not quite right.