Why don’t your eyelashes grow as fast as your hair?

Hello kiddos,

This is Professor Mordy Maven, Thinker, Wonderer, and Figure-Outer of all things Science-ish. What that basically means is I try really hard to figure stuff out. I do the hard work so you don’t have to!

Now, you guys know how much I like to be helpful, right? Well, my brother’s hair was looking like a shaggy mess and given that his bar mitzvah is coming up, I knew how busy my mother was taking care of photographers, caterers, and stuff. She kept saying that she’s running around like a chicken without a head. (Interesting imagery!) I knew that there was no way she was going to have time to take him to the barber. And since I’ve always been good at cutting….

It only took a little convincing to get my brother to sit down on the stool in the bathroom and close his eyes. Then, I took out my scissors and gave him a haircut myself.

And guess what? It came out… wonderful! In fact, he looked so great that I felt confident enough to continue. I decided to give him a teeny, tiny trim… on his eyelashes.

When I was done, my brother looked shocked. People without eyelashes generally do. I felt kind of shocked, too. I might have gasped or something because my mother came in, and when she saw what I had done, she was less than pleased. At least, that’s what I deduced from the screaming, blubbering sounds that came out of her.

“Don’t worry, Ma!” I said encouragingly. “This kid’s hair grows like a bush, I’m sure his lashes will grow back in no time.”

Then my mother whirled around to look at me, and from the look on her face I decided to do the smart thing: move out of her way very, very quickly. I hurried to my room to do some research and what I found out wasn’t great. Because as it turns out, I might have been a tiny drop wrong about how fast eyelashes grow. Which led me to wonder,

Why don’t your eyelashes grow as fast as your hair?