vanity and amputation

A gross post. For posterity. Because they obviously need to know these things.


One of the things I never really liked about myself was a birthmark - ok, a mole, a big, hideous mole - on the back of my head. It is the reason I have shrunk from hands plunging into my hair and hairdressers wielding pointy combs, and why I secretly fear that someone will offer me a million dollars to shave my head on television and I will not be able to do it. I am of Nordic descent; we are blue-eyed, white-skinned, sunburned, and speckled with rich, meaty, knobbly moles, so as to better sneak up on spotted baby seals and, maybe, to provide snacks on long journeys. Thanks, viking ancestors. I had mine clipped off today, starting with the monster growing out the back of my head - uncreatively dubbed "Voldy". (To be fair, perhaps not quite as large as a second head, but at least the size of a pea. That is huge when you are only seeing something with your fingers. Just ask my high school boyfriend. HAA HA. I am vain and mean.)

I also had a couple on my neck, not so nightmarish. Before:



Aw, happy moles are happy. Ignore the green throttle-marks left by my cheap jewelry.

I imagined it would be a neat and tidy process, and I would trot in to work blemish-free and smoothy-smooth. Doctors use Photoshop to do cosmetic procedures now, right? But no - there were scissors and needles and scalpels and cauterizing rods and stitches and bandages involved. "Fine," I said, "Take them off with nail clippers if you have to." My doctor put me up on a table, cut a bald patch out of my hair, stuck me with a needle, cut and tugged and pressed gauze to my head as blood ran down the back of my neck, and asked for sutures. "My first stitches!" I said. "Wait, no, come to think of it, when I gave birth I think I got about 8 of them. But that doesn't count." "Nah," she agreed. What? Why did we just agree on that? I needed my henparts sewn up after being torn open 3 inches by the blunt force of someone's head. That should probably count more than having a mole nicked off. When she was done, I asked to see it, and it was... oh god. I looked at it, with my eyes. And it really did look like Voldemort. Only Voldemort has Ralph Fiennes underneath, and this really, really did not.



Yes, I had to resort to lolcat for that. Also, thank you internet, for giving me this while I was at it:



Also true.

Anyway, the rest of the nicks weren't so bad, and they shooed me out into the waiting room with a bottle of antibiotics and a giant bandage taped to my forehead. I fluffed my locks to arrange them over the bald spot, and a giant hank of hair came out in my hand. I looked around in horror at the empty room and then buried the hairball in the garbage like it was someone's tiny dog I had sat on.

Pulled up to work, and an odd hiss emanated from beneath the car. Specifically, from a big gaping wire-laced crack bulging in the side of the right rear tire. Oh no. I do know how to change a tire, just as I know how to drive stick, start a fire, behead a zombie, and punch a shark. I did not have to do it, however, because my janitor is awesome and he loooves me and I bribe him. I did help lug the busted tire around to the trunk, though, and got greasy dirt all over my work pants. To cheer myself up, I peeled my forehead bandaid off in the mirror, expecting to see something magical and cute, and shrieked at the big gruesome hole cut in a jagged star and burned black in the middle. By the time I walked in to work, I really wasn't feeling too good about the bandages, clumps of missing hair, burn hole in my face, stitches in my scalp, and filthy pants - and there were the two good-looking A/C repair guys who I had forgotten were coming to replace the Singing Compressor of Doom. "I got in a fight with a bear in the parking lot," I said defensively. Damn.


After:



Oh yeah, that's a real improvement there.

My forehead looks much better, too.



moral: remove your moles with nail clippers.