Pimple

 

Around the age of fifteen my face looked like the Pacific 'Ring of Fire'. Pimples waiting to explode like so many tiny volcanoes. I did everything right. Washed my face, used pimple cream, and tried not to pick at them. That was difficult because there's nothing as satisfying as popping a pimple. Every time I thought the onslaught of teen skin eruptions had settled down, a new giant pimple would emerge. I could go to bed at night with only a minor pimple puss and wake up in the morning with a red beast pushing out of my face. It was a troubling time that many kids went through before the invention of decent acne treatments in the 1970s. Lucky for me, the photographer who did the photos for the high school yearbook, was an artist with the airbrush. To look at my yearbook photo you'd never know I had a red giant on the end of my nose. Now, fifty four years later you would think the problem of pimples would be behind me. It is not. Yesterday morning I woke up to find one of what my mom used to call 'blind' pimples, had taken up residence in my ear. It's not popable, and it's painful. That's what I get for wishing I was  young again. A pimple.

The photographer was an artist