The Gift That Keeps On Giving

You know, there are some things you should only have to suffer through once.

First steps. Being potty-trained. Losing your first tooth. Learning to ride a bike. Having your heart broken by Mr. Peterson, your 7th grade Science teacher, when you saw him holding hands with his WIFE after a school function one evening and you had the biggest crush on him EVER and why couldn't he wait for YOU instead of marrying her???

Um. Well.

Then there were pimples.

Zits.

Those horrible bumps that turned into hills that became mountains on your face, just when you began to notice and be noticed by boys.

I wrote an essay in my sophomore year of high school about the lowly zit, and how I would be ever so glad to outgrow it. I couldn't wait for the day when it would no longer cause me angst. Oh, for the time when I didn't have to worry anymore about a huge blob showing up on the most noticable part of my face at the worst possible moment! I figured that would happen around the ripe old age of 21 or so.

Ah, Youth! You are so full of folly!

Lemme tell you youngsters out there something....it's the curse that keeps on giving.

At the moment I have one right in the middle of my left cheek. No folks, it's the upper cheek. And I've been waiting on Mount Vesuvius to erupt all week long. As the days went on it just got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, but refused to come out and fight. Finally, after it had taken over the greater part of the left side of my face, I did what any red-blooded American teenager would do.

I sounded the air-raid sirens, yelled out "TAKE COVER, FOLKS, SHE'S GONNA BLOW!!!" and I popped the sucker.

I know, I know. It was gross. It wasn't pretty. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and believe me...this was a desperate, desperate time.

At this point I'm guessing I'll have a huge one either right between my eyes or on the tip of my nose when they lay me out cold on that slab of marble and my soul goes to meet Jesus. That would be just my luck. I can almost hear Him now...

"You gonna pop that thing, or what?"