Trading Faces

I mean, wouldn’t you be offended? Wouldn’t you want to know exactly what was so wrong with your face that it got rejected by whoever ended up with it? Even posthumously, I’d want an explanation. “Was it the unibrow? Have you never heard of threading?”

Nevertheless, this leap in nip and tuck technology would have a range of immediate applications. If you had committed a blasphemous act of lampoon fundamentalism depicting the Prophet Mohammed in a controversial manner, you might want to get a face transplant yourself, right away.

And not a cartoon face, either. That would be too obvious. It would have to be a real one, but whose? It’s not like you can request Beyonce. You have to go with pretty much whatever face happens to be available at the moment your need for one arises.

Still, this first ever face transplant case was a sort of a bizarrely compatible match between donor and recipient. As near as I can make it out, the woman who needed a transplant had tried to kill herself with sleeping pills but lived, and then got a face from another woman who had who successfully committed suicide. Read that again if you like; it won’t make it any easier to follow. The face of a woman who didn’t want to live and no longer does, now lives on as the face of a woman that doesn’t want to be alive any longer.

But, OK, here’s the weird part. The reason the first woman needed a face transplant is because, while she was out cold from the overdose, her dog ate her face off. Google it if you don’t believe me. When dogs run out of homework to nosh on, all bets are off.