Dec
14
As a kid, I can remember this time when everything I’d heard about nuclear war sort of coalesced into this one awful thought: it could happen at any time. We learned about duck and cover in school, and the take-home message for me at the time was that an attack could come with absolutely no warning.
Of course, it never did, and schools have mostly gone on to prepare for other disasters. Like, for instance, a mentally unstable person stalking the hallways with the intent of hurting children.
I’m thinking ahead to talking to Riley about what happened in Connecticut this morning, and feeling heavy about his world where kids have to worry about the reality — not the vague theoretical possibility, but the reality — of gunmen stepping into their classrooms to open fire, and god damn, aren’t we just a screwed-up species sometimes.
Thinking of you, too, my Internet friends, and your families, and the families and children in Newtown. What a terrible day.
Dec
12
Last summer I posted something on Twitter about finding a laser removal place whose website was riddled with misspellings. Do the egregious typos matter, I joked, if the tattoo is coming off your body?
It turns out the answer (as many pointed out to me at the time) was probably a resounding YES. Or maybe it’s not the fault of the business at all, but rather my skin. I don’t know, but I do know that after a hefty payment and one session, my attempt to begin erasing an ancient, unwanted tattoo left me with something worse than what I had before.
I shared a photo of it once — it’s a super-cheesy rose on my chest that has stretched and faded to look even uglier than it did immediately after it was inked into my skin, which was frankly pretty ugly. I spent years avoiding deep necklines and mostly ignoring it, but over the summer I decided I was sick to death of trying to keep it covered (the tip of it even peeks out of my super-modest swimsuit) and it was time to say goodbye.
So I called around and found a place that maybe wasn’t so great at spelling but seemed relatively affordable, and I did the consultation and all that. I paid the required fees for exactly one treatment, and after a few weeks of healing I had … a scar.
A really weird, raised scar that has never improved after five months or so. It looks like a blister, but it’s keloid scar tissue. It’s unattractive, but worse, it’s wildly sensitive — even the lightest feeling of cloth against it feels bothersome, and something like a sports bra is downright painful. If I get goosebumps, that part of my chest feels like it’s being stabbed with needles.
I followed the post-treatment care instructions to a T, it never seemed infected or anything like that, so why it scarred so badly (and faded NOT ONE BIT, by the way) is beyond me. A bad treatment? A fluke reaction? Who knows. I doubt there’s much that can be done at this point, aside from having it surgically removed.
I’m sure there’s some sort of deeper lesson here — you can’t erase your past? Don’t let a business shoot powerful lasers into your skin if they can’t use spellcheck? — but the bottom line is whenever I see it now, or experience the discomfort of something rubbing against it, I have this feeling of having screwed up. Of having made a really dumb, permanent decision. Which, you know, is exactly the feeling I was trying to get rid of.
-
My product review site:
[