This Is The Closest I'm Getting to A Cruise For Christmas.

Ya know what stinks? I can’t even catch a glamorous disease.

I’ve tried everything I can to be glamorous. But it just isn’t happening for me. I thought I had hit my stride one particular night but when I look back on pictures I now realize that denim skirts were out, flats did me no favors and someone lied to me when they said “no, I can’t see your bump-it.”

Sheesh.

So last Friday I took a little jaunt to the dermatologist. Because who can be glamorous when they have something growing on the side of their face? So I went to have a couple of sun-spots removed. Oh me and my afternoons in the sun. When will I learn?

Oh, and there was one other thing I was having looked at. Really its no big deal but if you must know, for some time now I have had a bump on the end of my nose. It isn’t terribly noticeable – but its noticeable. I like to think you have to have the vision of a 4 year old to notice it since she incessantly tells me, “Your nose is like the witch on Sleeping Beauty.” But come to find out other people saw it too. I know this because we were eating lunch out with friends the other day when my Granny grabbed my hand mid-bite and said, “That thing on your nose just keeps getting bigger and bigger doesn’t it?”

It feels good to know that both the young and the insane can see it.

So when I go to the derma (yeah, I call it that. Glamorous, no?) on Friday I am astounded to find out that..
1. That thing on my nose can be remedied and
2. Those aren’t sun spots. They are barnacles.

Barnacles, people! I have barnacles. Lest you forget barnacles are something that grow on the side of ships. (Insert weight jokes here. Though trust me, I’ve heard them all…..from my family!) But yep, I have them. Barnacles. Oh no, they couldn’t be sun-spots from the days I spent lounging at the pool in the summer. Oh no, they couldn’t be from my trip to Hawaii circa 2002. Heck no, they aren’t from the hours I spent riding around in a convertible when I was, well, never. They are barnacles.

And I have them.

They are also hereditary – or so they tell me. Though both of my parents have assured me a barnacle has never grown on them nor will it ever. Leaving me to wonder both: why me, Lord? and where did I come from?

As my doctor finished sawing away and scraping off and bandaging up she applied the bandages to the three different spots on my face with the order, “Do not remove these band-aids for at least three days.”

I would like to state for the record that I was leaving her office to have a reunion with my college girlfriends. That’s right. I would be spending the weekend with college girlfriends and bandages. And barnacles. Does it get any fancier that me? They didn’t know what to congratulate me on when they saw me: my recent weight gain or my facial scarring.

It was a good weekend, though. The bandages are finally removed and there is just a little scabbing thus far. One of my friends saw me at church and commented, “What happened to your nose?” I reminded her of the bump that had always been there but she swore she’d never seen it, to which my mother replied, “You’d never seen that thing? What are you blind? Oh, and Melissa, turn your face and show her your barnacles. She says they’re hereditary but I’ve never had any.”

Do you think I came from gypsies? God, I hope so.