To my friends: do me a favor...

About 6 years ago, I met a friend and her partner for lunch one day. It was the first time (and last) I had met the woman as they broke up a short time later. The woman was nice enough, and as long as she made my friend happy, I suppose that's all that mattered. But truly, I had a hard time looking her in the face, much less sitting directly across from her at lunch. It somewhat ruined my appetite... all the facial hair this woman had. I remember resisting the urge to ask her if she ever looked in the mirror and why she didn't do something about it.
I mean seriously, she had more facial hair than my husband gets when he goes for a month without shaving. And no, I'm NOT exaggerating.
Now I'm sure some of you are probably going to argue that perhaps she was taking male hormones in order to better "play the part" in their relationship, but I would argue differently.
Since I never saw her again, I don't know if she ever shaved it off, plucked it out, or had it waxed away, but it gives me the willies every time I think about it.
We have a neighbor, and for the 16 years I've known this woman, she too has had a facial hair problem, although to her credit, she does make some attempt to do something about it. I'm guessing she must take scissors and try to trim them back, 'though how often I've no idea. I just know whenever I see her, she's always got a lot of stubble above her upper lip and it makes me crazy.
Perhaps it was because of these women that I became aware of my own stubble that started appearing a few years ago. I blogged about it once before. It's not something I'm proud of, but it's not anything I can (successfully) hide either. I don't feel I'm a vain person, yet for as much time as I spend peering into the mirror each day, looking for those little stubbles, hunting them down and tweezing them away, you'd think I was the vainest person on earth. I feel if I don't yank them out by the root as soon as I see or feel them (and I often feel them long before I'd ever see them), then I'm liable to end up looking like one of those other women and grossing others out.
No matter how much I've hunted for and tweezed in the morning before going to work, I find myself running my fingers over my neck and chin several times throughout the day, seeking out those little blonde stubbles that aren't so easy to see, practically creating gouge marks on my neck in an effort to dig them out as they are so tiny they're nearly impossible to grab with the tweezers, yet they're just big enough to feel and annoy the sh*t out of me.
So for those of you that are my close friends, please do me this favor: If you see me and you happen to notice a whisker that I've missed, please take me aside and tell me about it instead of letting me walk around grossing others out.