Face Disgrace

My face is getting better, thank you.

A couple of weeks ago I went to see my dermatologist to endure my semi-annual facial blasts with his ready can of Reddi-Freeze (or whatever it's called). As I reported on Facebook then, I looked, afterward, as if someone had peppered me with a pellet gun. Forehead, nose--both featured red dots that, first, oozed and, second, scabbed over.

When the scabs fell about a week later (with some impatient assistance from me), I realized I should have waited a few more days to Let Nature Take Her Course.

Picky, picky.

Anyway, as a result of my impatience, a couple of them have scabbed over again, and I am right now trying to restrain myself. 

TMI?

Hey, no one is forcing you to read this post, right?

My face has been a Reddi-Freeze war zone for, oh, fifteen years or more. I'm paying, I know, the price for running around in boyhood and young manhood, enjoying Old Sol, who was simultaneously delighting and damaging me.

But, hey, I'll never get old, right? I'll never have to Pay the Price!

Actually, when I was a kid, I don't remember that there were a lot of concerns about Old Sol. Being in the sun was healthful--you know, Vitamin D and all? A tan meant you were looking good.

Unfortunately (Fortunately?) I do not tan. Never have. I burn-and-peel. Increase my number of facial freckles--at least, so it was in youth. (I'm not sure if there's any scientific basis for this more sun = more freckles, but it certainly seemed so to me.  Kind people told me freckles were "cute"; truthful people--i.e., bullies--said otherwise.)

Anyway, decades later, as I've said, I make semi-annual visits to the dermatologist. I've had one skin cancer surgery (forehead--a squamous cell--a dozen years ago--I looked like Frankenstein's creature for a couple of months), but mostly it's just been blasts of Reddi-Freeze.

I'm actually grateful for the stuff, despite the ... inconvenience afterward. (The doctor always jokes about it, just before releasing into my face the breath of Boreas [Greek god of North Wind and winter--think: Aurora Borealis]. He asks me if I've got any modeling gigs coming up. Ha, ha.) It stings--okay, hurts--for a few minutes.

Then the waiting, the impatience, the impulsiveness that brings another week of waiting ...

Anyway, I don't have to squint too much right now when I look in the mirror--or make sure the light is low--or ask Joyce how I look (she always lies, bless her). Things are better.

And I can relax a little, find comfort in the knowledge that it's nearly a half a year before I go see Dr. Boreas again.