Oh, don’t panic. That isn’t even the gross part. That is just my puckered lips. This, despite the title of this particular post, is still a family-friendly blog.
But if you ever do get one of those digital microscopes that you can hook up to your laptop, like I did for Christmas this year, for all you hold sacred, resist the temptation to use it on yourself. Oh, like all my ideas, it started off well enough. I thought my fingerprints would be cool to look at up close.
I mean, the little drops of oil oozing out is sort of interesting. That is how they catch criminals through the use of fingerprinting technology, after all.
I got a good shot of one of the tiny diamonds in my wedding ring. Now, if I had just fought the urge, once I had the thing all hooked up, to start looking for other interesting things.
I moved the small scope up to my face. I didn’t work today, so I didn’t shave.
Hey, what about my mustache? Well, now I wish I had one of these when I was a lot younger than 58.
So, I guess if you mix black, brown, white and silver, you get grey???
So far, so good… but the microscope was still roving… and the crack squirrels that live in my head were becoming interested in this project. They started to whisper suggestions. I ignored them… at first…
Why are my eyebrows less grey than my mustache??? And what are those little flakes??? Do I have eyebrow dandruff???
Now, I know the hair on the top of my head is very grey… white, some might almost say…
But I was having fun, moving the little scope around while I adjusted the focus knob and the light knob with one hand, while clicking on the ‘take a photo’ button with the other.
It was a juggling act, but I felt like a scientist. I was discovering a new world, and that world was the outside of myself.
‘What about that US Navy anchor tattoo you have on your forearm from when you were 17, and served your country’ I heard the little squirrel voices whisper.
Just old, faded ink under old, faded skin. ‘Oooooh, as long as we are looking at hair, let’s see how much hair is growing out of your ears now’ came the crack-fueled voice.
Okay, that is a little mean-spirited, but… whoa… wait…
Good thing the scope is too big to actually fit inside my ear canal. But then, another varmint-voice pointed out that way back in the first posts I did, while I was still in the Bay Area at my mom’s house at Christmas, playing with my new toy, I had jokingly threatened to post photos of moles and other bodily growths, in a game I was going to call: Does this look malignant to you?
Even as I was thinking up a reply to put the squirrels in their place, I could feel my hand sliding the scope towards a very small mole that didn’t look too scary.
I think, medically speaking, that one is called a ‘blood blister’, and not a mole.
And then I got a hold of myself and made myself stop, before I ended up posting something that all of us would end up regretting. The bad ones, well, that is what dermatologists are for, right?
Pouring My Art Out 