“You have two really crazy eye­brows!” my wife exclaims as she read­ies a pair of tweezers.

Every now and again, I get a cou­ple of eye­brow hairs that are over­achiev­ers. They grow longer than the oth­ers at a much faster rate than the oth­ers, and they also grow up and out from the rest of my eye­brow. It almost looks like what could be the anten­nae of some­thing liv­ing in my eyebrow.

As my wife moves in closer to pluck the non-conformist super cil­ium from my brow, she stops.

“Where did you get that scar?” she asks, notic­ing a small scar in my right eyebrow.

It was Hal­loween night 1997 in Glen Burnie. I was walk­ing around my favorite haunt, Mar­ley Sta­tion Mall, vis­it­ing acquain­tances and admir­ing cos­tumes. Hav­ing been employed by mul­ti­ple stores in the mall over a cou­ple of years, and loi­ter­ing there when­ever I was off, I knew peo­ple within every inch of the place.

That was, except for one girl. We knew each other, but label­ing her just another acquain­tance was not pos­si­ble or remotely my goal. She worked at a lit­tle smoothie shop, and at first sight, I was smit­ten with her. Her hair was dark, her skin was nat­u­rally tan. Her eyes were filled with brown irises. I pur­chased 5 dol­lar peanut but­ter and banana smooth­ies from her every­day for two months straight. Sure, the smooth­ies were over­priced, but nei­ther I nor my wal­let felt any pain over the chance to talk with her for a four minute trans­ac­tion of shout­ing over blenders.

Here on Hal­loween night, the mall was adver­tised and uti­lized as a safe trick-or-treating alter­na­tive for kids. Each store was sup­plied their own stash of candy to dis­pense to the wee sav­ages, and other than chil­dren in cos­tumes, busi­ness oth­er­wise was very slow. The mall’s nor­mal clos­ing hour was nine o’clock, but most every­one, aside from employ­ees, evac­u­ated the mall by 8 o’clock. That meant that for that last hour on Hal­loween night, the mall was an out­right ghost town.

As I made my way around the mall, I walked past the smoothie shop, and there she was. She was stand­ing there, look­ing just as beau­ti­ful as ever. She was using the lack of busi­ness dur­ing the last hour on Hal­loween night to get a jump start on clean­ing for the night’s clos­ing. As I approached the counter, time slowed down, and Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away” played in my head.

“Happy Hal­loween!” I blurted out.

She looked up from her clean­ing, sur­pris­ingly not star­tled, and replied, “Hey, you too!”

“So, are you going to a party after here tonight?”

“Nah, prob­a­bly not. You?”

“I’m kind of walk­ing around right now to find out if there’s any­thing going on.”

Look­ing back on it now, that was my oppor­tu­nity to con­tinue with some­thing to the effect of, “But if you’re not doing any­thing after work, I would love to take you out for a bite to eat or a late movie or to shoot pool.” But instead, I let her say, “Well good luck with that.”

Not quite sure where to take the con­ver­sa­tion after that, I made a slick lit­tle back­wards exit that I must’ve picked up from Luke Perry’s char­ac­ter on 90210, com­plete with my hands in my pock­ets, as I said, “And good luck with your cleaning.”

She looked back up at me with a con­fused smile and said, “Thanks.”

As she went back to her clean­ing, I turned to walk away, and was met face first with a temp wall next door.

When the mall lost a store or a new store was being built, instead of hav­ing a vacant space or vis­i­ble con­struc­tion, they cov­ered the space with a tem­po­rary wall. And it usu­ally said, “Com­ing Soon, ‘New Store Name Here’”. The one next to the smoothie shop jut­ted out about 3 feet from the wall that I slickly backed over to dur­ing my Luke Perry Dylan-like exit. By explain­ing that, I’ll now tell you that when I was “met face first with a temp wall next door”, it was more like “my right eye­brow met the very cor­ner of the temp wall next door.”

That thud against the temp wall was so loud that she looked up from her clean­ing to find me hold­ing my right eye. I kept my hand on my eye and mus­tered out a laugh and an embar­rassed, “Duh.” before very quickly walk­ing away.

Five feet from of her sight, I took my hand away from my eye to find a pool of blood in my palm that was now run­ning down my wrist.

My mind was an adren­a­line filled blur of thoughts like, “Did I really hit the wall that hard?”, and “Why do head wounds always bleed so much? I hope I don‘t need stitches”. But ulti­mately, every thought went back to “Well, I guess I’m never going back there again.”

I ducked into the cof­fee shop on the other side of the offend­ing temp wall and asked one of my friends work­ing inside for some nap­kins. I was imme­di­ately met with a sar­cas­tic, “Very funny Big Ben.”

“Of course on a night where fake blood was a sta­ple, I would be truly bleed­ing from the eye.” I thought to myself as they finally gave me some nap­kins. After a few min­utes of inter­ro­ga­tion, I reluc­tantly gave up the story of my injury, which resulted in me walk­ing away to the empty mall’s echo­ing sounds of their laughter.

Still embar­rassed, I decided it was time to make my way to the pret­zel place where my ex-girlfriend worked. My mind was on one thing: sym­pa­thy. I seri­ously needed some, and maybe some ice. Dur­ing my walk through the mall, I would seem to pass every­one I ever knew. As my fel­low mall­rats and for­mer co-workers con­verge on me, I couldn’t help but think, “Where did all of you come from?”

I was look­ing around for secret por­tals or used zip lines dan­gling from the ceil­ing, when the group came to the con­clu­sion, with­out a sin­gle word from me mind you, that I had been in a fight. They asked me ques­tions like, “Who did this?” and “Which way did they go?” but at this point I was still so embar­rassed, espe­cially after the cof­fee shop con­fes­sion, that I didn’t answer them. I just walked into the food court, eyes fixed for­ward, as my fel­low mall­rats scat­tered to launch an offensive.

I didn’t care about the impend­ing war, or the call­ing off of a war car­ried out in my name, all I wanted was some ice for my eye, and some sym­pa­thy from my ex-girlfriend.

Walk­ing up to the pret­zel place, I once again had to explain my injury to her and her co-workers, com­plete with more dis­be­lief, and of course, more laugh­ter. “Hal­loween is the per­fect day to get injured, isn’t it?” I thought. “Glad I wasn’t shot, or I’d be dead by now.”

After the laugh­ter sub­sided, I got some ice for my eye, and walked out­side to smoke a cig­a­rette with my ex-girlfriend. And just as I had hoped for, I not only got a lit­tle sym­pa­thy, but a cou­ple of smooches too.

Only that night instead of any par­ties or ex sex, I, embar­rassed and slightly bat­tered, just went home.

Later that night I’m lay­ing in my bed, replay­ing the events of the night, when my pager went off. Cer­tain that the story had made it through the mall­rat net­work, and the voice­mail would sim­ply be one of those ear piece over­load­ing bursts of laugh­ter, I begrudg­ingly checked it any­way. When I called to lis­ten to the mes­sage, I’m met with a guy’s voice that I rec­og­nize as a fel­low mall­rat, say­ing, “Dude, we never found the guys, but we found blood on a temp wall.”

“Great. The girl from the smoothie shop saw it too I bet.” was my last thought before drift­ing to sleep and escap­ing this hor­ri­bly embar­rass­ing Halloween.

The temp wall was removed the next morn­ing, for the Novem­ber 1st open­ing of a store that spe­cial­ized in those goofy flags peo­ple have out­side of their front doors and kites and prod­ucts of that mate­r­ial. I never got to see my bloody after­math, though I would’ve loved to have seen the looks on the work­ers faces as they took down the wall. Then again, if that night before had taught me any­thing about people’s per­cep­tions on Hal­loween, the work­ers prob­a­bly thought it was fake blood too. But it didn’t mat­ter. Noth­ing about that area of the mall would mat­ter any­more, because I never went any­where near the smoothie shop again.

Five years later and it’s now the win­ter of 2002. I was doing a stand-up com­edy show at a dive bar in a neigh­bor­ing town of Glen Burnie called Pasadena. As I looked around at the crowd dur­ing my set, guess who was sit­ting at the bar? You guessed it; it was the girl from the smoothie shop. My heart skipped a beat, and in an instant I was that same ner­vous teenager all over again. As I watched her watch­ing me dur­ing one of my jokes, it didn’t appear that she rec­og­nized me. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to make her rec­og­nize me, or if I just wanted to make the audi­ence laugh, or sim­ply my ner­vous­ness, but for some rea­son, I told her and the whole crowd this very same tale of that Hal­loween night.

It was almost like I had been pos­sessed. My mouth just started going, telling the very story I just told you, a story that I tried for over a year after that Hal­loween to for­get. Blow­ing past any embar­rass­ment or humil­ity, I spilled it all, on the micro­phone, for her and for the patrons of the bar. Every­one laughed, espe­cially her, and I finally found myself hav­ing a great laugh over that night too.

After the show, I showed her my scar from that night as we shot a cou­ple of games of pool and talked about life and rela­tion­ships. She was now a mom, and was still as beau­ti­ful as I remem­bered. Maybe that’s why I was sur­prised that she was sin­gle. Now I know that any­one else would have called this encounter “fate”, but I couldn’t stop talk­ing to her about the long dis­tance rela­tion­ship I was in with this woman I had met in South Carolina.

As for “fate”, well, I guess there might have still been some in play. You see, I didn’t get to take the girl from the smoothie shop out that Hal­loween night in 1997, and after an embar­rass­ing moment, even made a point to never see her again. How­ever, fate saw that I would see her again and even got that chance to shoot pool with her. Top it all off with the big hug and the kiss on the cheek I got from her at the end of the night, and it was every­thing I had imag­ined it to be 5 years earlier.