Updated Nov 17, 2010 @ 11:12 AM
One morning I got up, looked in the mirror, and saw a constellation on my face.
There it was, the Big Dipper of zits: one on my nose, two on my chin and two on my cheek. Connect the dots and you got a saucepan.
“Augh!” I groaned to my husband. “Look at my face. I have pimples in the shape of the Big Dipper.”
“No, Honey, it’s more like Orion’s Belt. See how it goes across here,” he said, tracing the spots across my face.
I stood dumbfounded. Then the kids walked in.
“What’s up?” asked my son.
“Take a look at Mom,” said my husband. “Do you think the pimples on her face look more like the Big Dipper or Orion’s Belt?”
“It looks kind of like a peace sign to me,” said my daughter.
“I see an elephant,” said my son. “See, there’s the trunk.”
“Aaaaahhhh, I hate you all,” I shrieked. I was really annoyed. Not so much at my family, but at the fact that here I was at 45, still getting pimples. That at 45, I was still buying Clearasil. And that at 45, the stupid Clearasil wasn’t working.
My teenage son snickered. “Laugh it up puberty boy,” I warned him. “You’re next on the pimple parade!”
Unfortunately, my pimple crisis was not an isolated incident. Lately, I’d had more breakouts than a minimum-security prison. As I spackled cover-up across my cheeks, I thought I should go get some professional help before the entire galaxy could be mapped across my face.
But first I conferred with some friends. They all empathized. It seemed a bunch of us were trapped in the pimple/wrinkle zone. We felt like we were leading some Freaky Friday double lives: anti-aging moisturizer by day… benzoyl peroxide by night. I thought I should simultaneously get a subscription to More magazine and J-14.
Finally, I scrubbed off my makeup, put on a big hat, and went to the dermatologist.
“Too much chocolate?” I asked as she examined my constellation.
“Too many hormones,” she responded. “You have hormonal acne. It’s common in teenagers… and peri-menopausal women.”
“Since I’m not in that first category, I assume you think I’m in the second,” I said glumly. I had always been pre-, during, or post-something in my cycle. Now I was peri. Who knew?
She wrote me a prescription for some magic pills for the pimples, some more magic cream for the wrinkles, and told me to check back in a month.
For a few weeks, it was acne as usual. But then, slowly my complexion started to improve. By week four, my face was blemish free. I was overjoyed.
Then this week I woke up, and a new constellation had appeared across my face. I made an emergency appointment for the dermatologist and stormed into her office.
“Look,” I said pointing to my inflamed cheeks. “I thought the pills and cream would get rid of my pimples? What is this?”
She peered at my face.
“Poison Ivy.”
©2010, Beckerman. All rights reserved.
Note: Tracy Beckerman writes the nationally syndicated humor column, “Lost in Suburbia” and is the author of the book, “Rebel without a Minivan: Observations on life in the burbs.”
For the latest Lost in Suburbia column, click here.To follow Tracy on Twitter, go to @onerebelmom.
