Barnacles

By Sally Franz

“Barnacles.” Yup that’s what the dermatologist called them, or to be precise, “Oh. Those are just barnacles,” she said rubbing her finger over several of my bubbly little moles. What am I a ship?

“Well, take them off.” I said loudly.

“Oh, they aren’t the harmful kind, so we don’t remove them.”

“Not harmful to you lady, but these things are all over my body. They are harmful to my self-esteem, and they are harmful to my fantasy that I am not aging. I want to believe I can tread water at about age 55 and not show any more aging.

Meanwhile, the cute moles, the ones that are small and black and look like beauty marks, those are scheduled to go under the knife. And let me tell you if you have not had a mole carved out of your skin yet, you are in store for a treat. Think of sewing. If you have to repair a hole you would not gather the fabric into a bunch, because it would pucker. Instead you would sew a length in either direction around the hole creating a dart that increases and then decreases. For a quarter inch hole the total seam would be about three inches in length, ¼ inch width. For non-sewers that means a bunch of cutting and a bunch of stitches. Basically my body looks like I was in an explosion at a Gummy Worm factory.

And how do you know if you have a suspicious mole? Ah, the handy-dandy Mole Chart: A, B, C, D, and E. A: Asymmetry. If you draw a line through it, the two sides will match. Now mind you I was just told that you can divide a mole anyway to see if the sides match. So under that theory, it can look like a Christmas tree and if it can be split vertically down the “trunk” you are still good. B: Border. A good mole has smooth borders, never mind the ones I pointed out that do not have smooth borders I was told don’t count because they are freckles. C: Color. Good moles are all one color. Which means dark brown, I guess. But I also have weird blue, red and greenish ones. I have skin tags and aging spots. No one seems the least bit concerned about these except me. D: Diameter. If the moles are larger than the tip of a pencil eraser they could be bad. But apparently that does not count if they are mole/freckles/barnacles that are all merging into a map that looks like the archipelago of Zanzibar. E: Evolving. Okay, Darwin doubters aside, moles do morph into larger, darker more ominous creatures.  But here’s the problem, they expect me to remember what any of my 30,000 moles looked like last month. One clueless doctor even said to me, “Have your husband watch your moles.” First of all I did not have a husband at the time. But more to the point if I did walk into the bedroom in the buff I can guarantee you my husband’s first words would not be, “That mole on your left shoulder has changing borders.” (That is if he ever wanted to have sex again.) Seriously, am I going to ask a man who cannot find the glasses on his head or the gallon of milk in the refrigerator to notice my moles?

I even know people who had “bad” moles in between their toes and on the bottom of their feet. Think about trying to check your entire body for moles, scalp to heel. So, my biggest fear of finding a bad mole is now neck and neck with the fear that I will have to be rescued by the fire department one day…nude, Mole Chart in hand, stuck in a yoga pretzel pose trying to decipher a melanoma from a barnacle.

Sally Franz and her third husband live on the Olympic Peninsula. She has two daughters, a stepson, and three grandchildren. Sally is the author of several humor books including Scrambled Leggs: A Snarky Tale of Hospital Hooey and The Baby Boomer’s Guide to Menopause. She hosts a local radio humor segment, “Baby Boomer Humor with Sassy Sally”.