What Are Eyebrows For?

All the questions, questions, questions, questions absolutely drive me nuts some days. Daughter has been at this stage now for a very very long time. "Inquisitive" doesn't even BEGIN to describe it. Many times she just asks silly questions that she knows the answer to, so I make her think about it and answer it herself. There's been a lot of these lately, and I've become somewhat desensitized to the constant drone of questions in the background and seem to have developed a few canned answers that I respond with on a rotating loop. My favorite response to questions that have no answers tends to be, "Because God made it that way!" (which tends to be said with an exasperated inflection in my voice). Today, however, Daughter asked me a question that stumped me. "Mommy," she asked, "what are eyebrows for?" I stopped dead in my tracks as I realized that in all my 35 1/2 years, I've never considered this. "Because God made it that way" was not a response I was going to accept, because I really wanted to know too. My first response, was that maybe they are just for "looks." Then I suggested perhaps they were there to keep stuff out of our eyes. I pondered silently to myself if I'd ever noticed my eyebrows keeping stuff out of my eyes, and I really didn't think so. It sounded good, though.

And so, as Son was down for his nap, I was Googling "eyebrows." Whatever DID we DO before Google? I would have had to wait for the next trip to the library (which would have probably meant DAYS of pondering this annoying question) and then look the topic up in one of those little wooden drawer card catalog thingies which would reference some Dewey Decimal number for some sort of encyclopedia and then use the book's index to find eyebrows before I could FINALLY have the answer. Fortunately, roughly 4.5 seconds left me with the answer, which was roughly close to my second guess. When I considered that their main original purpose was to keep sweat out of our eyes while we tried to outrun dinosaurs, I tried to remember if I was ever sweating so hard that I appreciated my eyebrows keeping the sweat out of my eyes. I was reminded of a couple weeks ago when I was spending an inordinate amount of time in the garage laboring to finish a couple pieces of furniture. It was about 100 degrees in the garage with no breeze and a humidity level of about the same. Before I could even begin staining or sanding I could wring out my shirt. I am certain that my eyebrows came in handy then. I am also amazed that I could have taken my eyebrows for granted for 35 1/2 years. At the tender age of 3 years and 51 weeks, Daughter has now filed this bit of trivia in the recesses of her growing little brain, and I'm sure that along with appreciating her eyebrows long before I realized I appreciated my own, she will find opportune moments to make use of this information.