When the eyebrow picking first started, her parents had transferred Missy to a private school.   After that, she didn’t hang out with us much.  Her parents, it seems, bought into that expensive notion that Missy-now-Martie might do better in a place where she’d receive more ‘specialized attention,’ to aid in her development, academically, socially, and stuff like that.  I think it helped promote problems, causing more than it solved, if for no other reason than it’s when the eyelash yanking began.  But parents do tend to lead isolated lives, somewhere in a separate existence from their kids; they don’t hear, see or understand what really goes on behind the adolescent veil.  I’m sure if I ever have kids, it’ll be the same.

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