BANISHMENT 20: Bags Under My Eyes

Sometimes, on very, very rare occasions, I get the pleasure of going to bed early and getting up late. I get to fall asleep in my bed as opposed to on the reading chair where I always wake up with things like pencil lead in my teeth and animal-shaped coffee stains on my Hanes shirts. I get to take out my contacts, brush my teeth, and do the normal person thing - I imagine - of fluffing the pillows. This is all very exciting and makes me want to subscribe to magazines like Real Simple where people get eight hours of simple sleep all the time.

In the mornings, after these very fantastic voyages into Beddy Bye Land, I wake up feeling like I was picked first on the kickball team. I am extremely well rested and I don't even care if I drooled the night before because it's evidence that I was down for the count. The palms of my feet coast over the hardwoods on fresh daisies. My coffee tastes better, the sun is brighter, and I have this terrible problem where the corners of my mouth can't stop pointing up toward my ears.

But then I go out in public. And in public, people are mean. They walk up to you like you're their friend, like they care about your heart terribly, and then they say: "Megan, are you OK? You look like you're tired."

Without hesitation, I want to key their car with a sling blade.

I don't know what kind of world you were raised in, but the kind of world where you tell people they look tired is a mean world full of hellfire, brimstone, and continually rotten milk. Everyone knows tired is just another word for very-ugly-human-being, and to tell someone they look tired is to tell them they will be single, alone, and eating microwave dinners for the rest of their life.

When people ask me if I'm OK, I tell them I'm fine. I tell them I've never been better. In fact, the only person better than me is the guy who invented the snooze button because he's probably in bed. Snoozing.

The only thing wrong with me, apparently, is my genetics. Some people get child-bearing hips. Some people get fat fingers. Some people get rear ends the size of Kansas. As for me, I got bags.  Large, dark bags the size of hammocks that hang under my eyes through all sorts of weather. They are vast and deep and sometimes I imagine they could hold small villages. Perhaps Vancouver is hiding in one of them right now, hosting the Olympics.

For lent, if I could, I would give up the kangaroo patches under my eyes and live in a world where people say: "Megan, you look lovely. Have you done something new with your hair?" And I will say, "Absolutely not. I just wake up, on 3 hours of sleep, this perfect."

But as I cannot morph into Natalie Portman and as I cannot imagine seeing a slice and dice doctor to fix me up nice and restful, I will simply smile and say, "Yeah, a little tired. Thanks for asking. How are you doing? You look lovely with all that extra weight."