Wednesday, January 16, 2008

So, Were YOU Naked in Front of a Stranger Today?

'Cause I was. I signed up for a full body skin exam, and today was D Day. Dermatology Day. I didn't go because I'd found an oddly shaped blue mole or anything scary like that.

See, I'm so pale that my skin catches on fire if I'm in the sun for more than five minutes without 900 SPF sunblock. Thus, I've enjoyed many a sunburn. Especially when I was younger. During my childhood, the connection between prolonged exposure to the sun and skin cancer hadn't really been made. Or maybe it had been, and my parents thought it was part of a vast, left-wing agenda, and chose to ignore it as though it was a liberal scare tactic. Who knows?

All I know is that I wasn't aware of it. I was 10. All I was really aware of was Judy Blume's "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret." So, did I slather on Coppertone (or the generic knockoff equivalent) before frolicking in the pool, on the beach, or in the backyard? Heck no! The end result of all this was MCV flambé.

Cool as it was to have burned and molted two or three times a summer, I've come to recognize that all of those sunburns might have damaged my skin. And by "damaged", I mean I could have turned it into a layer of cancer.

But guess what, suckas? My skin is awesome. So porcelain perfect am I, the dermatologist said that I didn't need to come back for a screening for two years (one is the norm). See? My latter days of being a mouse potato who lurks indoors has netted some pretty sweet skin benefits*.

*Sorry if that last sentence came off as pornographic.

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