About Face

Do you recognize the old guy above? If not, then keep on reading.

Last weekend we decided to clear out our leftover food shopping from the holiday season. Our freezer was so stuffed that we couldn’t find anything. When I went hunting for that elusive bag of frozen shrimp and the chicken lasagna, I was almost upside down before I found them buried at the bottom. Our kids never say no to homecooked food at somebody else’s house. So we invited some of them for dinner.

Now that the menu was set, we also wanted to provide entertainment, especially for the kids. During the winter we send them to the toboggan hill, and in the summer months they go swimming at the local pool. As we all know, this is definitely not summer, and almost not winter. So what could they do to amuse themselves while the adults talked?

We had a brainwave. Agnes, our14-year-old grand daughter, had been at camp during the March Break – a camp for learning about special effects make-up. Now can you guess who that old guy is? Yes it’s Agnes, complete with make-up, a fake moustache, and a hoodie to cover up her long black curls.

Agnes agreed to bring her make-up kit with her and give us a demonstration. She arrived with her tools – several sizes of brushes, a scalpel, and some kind of clay used to make prostheses. The clay becomes an extra hunk of flesh to create a swollen part such as a broken nose or a growth. Then Agnes showed us at least a dozen shades of face colours and blood: fresh blood, day-old blood, dried up blood. The whole kit was kind of horrific.

Soon Gavin and his dad arrived. Gavin is also 14 and he and his cousin Agnes have been known to get into mischief. But Gavin wasn’t so sure about having make-up on his face. They reached a compromise: he was OK with having his hand made up to show the kind of bruises one might get from being in a fight, punching out his opponent, and winning! Agnes got out her tools and went to work.

Now what? They thought and thought. What if Agnes made up her face to look like she had been punched? She and Gavin would be a perfect pair! So she got out more tools. This time she included the clay, and the scalpel and even more blood. With the help of a mirror, she got to work on herself. And here is the result:

It was a perfect match. Gavin could be the bad guy and Agnes was the poor maiden. But what to do with their creation? Hmmm… They decided to text the photos to Gavin ‘s mom Sheila, who had been detained at work and could not join us for dinner. But could they possibly bend the truth a little? Could they say that this was a real fight? Could Agnes be in the hospital having stitches while Gavin was locked up at the police station?

Sheila wrote back within seconds. “Oh no! How could this happen?? Was Agnes’ nose broken? How would they get Gavin out of jail? How could the families ever reconcile after something like this?”

Gavin’s dad only allowed the suspense to linger a couple of minutes before he sent Sheila the “after” pictures.

Later on, when the laughter had died down, Agnes told us that she had met Shane Vieau at her make-up camp. Last Sunday he and his partner had won the Oscar for best make-up for the Canadian movie Frankenstein 2025. Shane had his Oscar with him when he visited the camp, and he let Agnes and her classmates touch it.

Now Agnes has her sights set on Hollywood. Maybe Gavin will decide to tag along.

Sue