Razor Sharp

I teach college English (although not really, since this will be the last semester I teach it, having nothing to do with how well I did and everything to do with the fact that it wasn't ever going to last anyway, and I am supposed to pretend to be an expert when I am unemployed in three months with really no job prospects, but I'm sure I've complained enough about that before and I will again later). In my classes on Tuesday, I had the students compete to see which team could come up with the most cliches. When my students asked why cliches are bad, I explained that it's because they no longer evoke images in our heads. They're so familiar that they've lost their power, and all we hear is the cliche.

But this isn't always true. Whenever I hear the phrase "razor sharp," for intance, it puts a very specific scene in my mind.

I'm standing in the upper bathroom of our house. I am holding a pink disposable razor from my mom's sink cupboard in my hand, the blade resting against my thumb. I am fourteen, attending Catholic school, and my father won't allow me to shave my first mustache. He says it's just peach fuzz anyway and it's not a problem. It is a problem: the dress code forbids facial hair and I've been warned. My father likes to brag that he was born with a mustache, and I have never seen him without one except once, in a photo of him as a small child.

I'm looking at myself in the mirror. Looking at my mustache, the dark hairs individual and straight, brushing my lip. I hate it. I don't want to have a mustache. I don't want to get in trouble.

Then, I hear someone at the door, the door starts to open, and I grip the razor tightly, trying to make it disappear in my hand. My brother tells me to hurry up so we don't miss church, then leaves. When he is gone and I check my hand, the razor has left two deep straight cuts half an inch deep in my thumb, the skin white and puffy around them, the blood just starting to seep up.

It starts to hurt later, when I lie that I cut my hand on a knife. I only hope no one notices there are two parralel cuts, not just one.

And I learn just how sharp razors are.