Skip to main content

file under s for strange (or skin tag)

Ever since he discovered them during a wrestling match a month or so ago, Jack has been fascinated by the two skin tags clinging to the outside periphery of my right armpit. The other night I agreed to let him cut them off. What? Why would he want to anyway? At my direction he got the cuticle scissors and a Kleenex to stop whatever bleeding there might be. After two unsuccessful and painful tries, I bade him turn the scissors over so the blade curved against my skin, rather than away from it. He cut off the little one first, then the big one. The big one he rolled between his fingers like a booger, than deposited it in a carefully crafted paper towel envelope. The next morning I threw it away, but then fished it out of the trash when he threw a fit.

What's up with that? I mean, I'm glad to be rid of those freaky little blemishes without paying a doctor to do the surgery, but why was Jack so interested? And why did he insist on saving the big one?

Last night I threw it away again. We'll see what happens.

Comments

Lori Stewart Weidert said…
At the advice of a friend, I tied a string around a skin tag on my armpit, and it fell off in one day. Only really I used a piece of waxed dental floss, because string was too wobbly to manipulate. It worked. I've been meaning to draw a cartoon of the process.
1:58 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

memory

10 comments
Read more

expanding my culinary horizons

After last night's culinary debacle, today's culinary surprise was particularly welcome. My dear friend Rukmi brought me lunch! Rukmi is Sri Lankan. She cooks the best food. I ate a fish and egg croquette, lentil curry, saffron rice, all with delicious chicken and what I thought might be tuna. I asked Rukmi what the meat was, and she told me it's all chicken. "The flat, triangular meat? With the spices? Is it tuna?" She laughed lightly. "That's a wegetable," she said, in her lovely Sinhalese way. "Oh, yeah? Like a beet?" That made sense, because it flaked like tuna steak or like beets might. "It is jackfruit." Jackfruit? Jackfruit! I ate jackfruit today. Rukmi told me all about it: she used canned young jackfruit she bought at G & L Market on 22nd St.; fully grown jackfruits are gigantic and if one fell on your head it could kill you. When fully ripe, jackfruit is full of big pods that each have a seed in the middle, like a p...
6 comments
Read more

in which I get knocked down

Sickness saps my energy, both physical and mental. It's surprising, really, how seldom I get sick, since I work in a petri dish. When I do get sick it lays me low and happenings that I might normally take in stride just completely knock me down. Last week I was diagnosed with an embarrassing viral infection, the symptoms of which on their own couldn't possibly have dragged me this deep down: sores in my mouth and throat that blistered and peeled and made every mouthful feel and taste like shredded pennies; an itchy rash around my mouth and nose and on my chest. Compounding that: knees that felt packed in hot wax, the backs of my eyeballs aflame. No fever, so no H1N1. Negative strep. Malaise. But I soldiered (martyred?) through most of the week at work, because I could, and some of the other teachers had to stay at home with their diverticulitis and kidney stones. On Thursday night my laptop died. On Friday night I felt I could deal with my weekend obligations. DH went out of t...
5 comments
Read more