Something you MUST know

“The best reason I can think of for not running for President of the United States is that you have to shave twice a day.” – Adlai E. Stevenson

Before I get into my “real” posting, the quote above mentioned the President of the United States, so I feel compelled to give a “shout out” here. And no, it is not a “congratulations” to Jenna Bush for her nuptials this past weekend, although they did play the Texas Fight song at her rehearsal dinner. Really, she is the only cool Bush (I can’t believe I just used the words cool and Bush in the same sentence): she went to Texas, got arrested for underage drinking twice while there (which I would like to point out was 2 more times than I got arrested when I was in college…or ever… and I didn’t have the Secret Service to save my ass) and wrote a book about a young mother with AIDS…I think Jenna Bush is alright. Especially considering where she came from…

Anyway, this isn’t about Jenna. This is about my main man Obama.

More superdelegates than Hillary? How you like them apples?

Which leads me to another quote from Adlai E. Stevenson:

“I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends… that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.”

Though this wasn’t intended to be a political blog… I would love if Obama somehow pulled through in West Virginia.

Ok, let’s get onto the juicy stuff I came here to tell you about.

I discovered some very important information this weekend that I MUST share. The difficulty with this information is that it is kinda weird and gross, and doesn’t really “fit” into any other category of things I talk about, so I don’t really know where else I could possibly include information like this… so I am just going to come out with it.

Tico men shave their armpits!!!

Yup, you got it… nothin’ under the arms except possibly a little stubble. This may actually bother me more than the gecko that crawled across my back in the middle of the night while I was sleeping (ok, that didn’t really happen, but it is totally possible, and I am fearful of it happening every night).

While you may think, or hope in the case of all of my boys from the STOP AIDS Project (I am telling you the gay boys are rooting for me and the shirtless wonder… and it is not because they love me… though I am sure they do… it is because they are just dying to see pics of this man), that I came to discover this tid bit of information in scandalous way that would not be shared on the blog, sadly, once again that is not the case….

It is ok Skeemers and Dadders, you can read on… nothing scandalous here.

While I was working my new job as “Farmer Becca” over the weekend (more about that in the next post), I was around many Tico men who were either in tank tops, or without shirts (Don’t get excited, believe me, you would rather not have seen. Except for the nephew of my friend Enrique, now he was something to look at; but he is only 22… and while it wouldn’t get me arrested, it would make me feel dirty… and not the good kind of dirty… oops, sorry S&D).

I kept thinking throughout the day that something wasn’t right and looked odd, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Then it hit me.

There is no hair under these grown men’s arms!! What a disturbing realization!

If it was only one man I would have probably chalked it up to some strange STD symptom, but surely all Tico men can’t be afflicted with the same disease. Though prostitution is legal here, so maybe.

After I concluded that it wasn’t a side effect of an STD, I thought that maybe it was caused by a parasite in the water. After all, I had to make my second trip to the pharmacy last week (luckily I made it through once again without needing to provide a “sample,” and am now boiling my drinking water). But if it was from something in the water, give me a couple gallons… loose weight and never have to shave my armpits again? Now that is the kind of parasite growth I would sign up for!

But then I detected stubble (something I never thought I would have to say about a man’s armpits) and concluded that it wasn’t a water based reaction resulting in loss of armpit hair growth. Damn! So I tried to think back to the shirtless wonder to see if I could remember seeing any armpit hair on him (and by “tried to think back” I mean “let myself daydream”). After all, he was half undressed at the time I internally asked him to be the father of my children. But as I “thought back,” all I could remember was that chest…and those abs… and that chest… and those abs… my eyes never made it to his pits… not generally an area I scope out on my future ex-boyfriends. So while I enjoyed my “daydreaming” it was no help to my current state of wonder.

Because this was something I had never seen before (except maybe on swimmers, who shave their whole bodies...but I don’t look very closely at them, those weenie bikinis gross me out) I thought maybe this was just the “cool” thing to do for this group of friends. However, if there is one thing I have learned during my time in Costa Rica, it is that my initial observations are not always accurate (Remember the whole “push” on the pharmacy door?) and decided it was necessary to “test” my theory. Sadly the shirtless wonder has not been spotted since the initial gawking (turns out I am a worthless stalker), and thus was not available for my experiment; so I was left with no other choice but to look through all of my pictures from the pool and the beach to see if I could detect hair in any Tico’s pits.

Yes, I know it is weird for me to search my pictures for men with armpit hair… but I was conducting a scientific experiment here. My friend Greg (the only man I know as smart as my Dad), who is a Biology professor, is coming to visit in July… I thought he would be pleased to know I was conducting scientific experiments prior to his arrival. Especially because the only “experiments” he has seen me conduct (in our almost 10 years of friendship) have involved wine… and they aren’t really “experiments” so much as “taste tests.” And by “test” I mean “gulp.”

And frankly, after all I have shared on this blog, I am already at the point of no return here… comparatively speaking looking for armpit hair in pictures seems pretty harmless.

Thus far the results of my experiment are as follows: I can not find armpit hair on any Tico men in any of my pictures.

However, I am not yet ready to conclude my experiment, as I feel it is necessary to take and study more pictures of shirtless Tico men on the beach before I present my theory. Don’t judge me people, this is science…I need to provide a comprehensive explanation for my theory, and my limited knowledge would not yet allow me to do so, thus more extensive research is required. If you don’t believe me, read this:

According to the National Academy of Sciences:
“In everyday language a theory means a hunch or speculation. Not so in science. In science, the word theory refers to a comprehensive explanation of an important feature of nature that is supported by many facts gathered over time.”

See, I am just looking for “many facts gathered over time”… 5 months to be exact. However, even with my continued commitment to scientific research in this area, I will still be left to decide how I feel about the results of this experiment. While I am certainly all for “manscaping” I think that shaving the pits might take it too far. How about we compromise on a trim?