Have you ever had a horn pimple? You know what I am talking about…the pimple that forms above your eyebrows smack dab in the middle of your forehead…the kind that is a massive mound that looks like at any moment a horn will break through and you will claim you true status as a unicorn. Well, I may be exaggerating a little, but not much.

So…have you been so afflicted? I have…dozens of times. Each time I tell myself to leave it alone and I remind myself that picking at it has never come to a good end. I am, after all, an intelligent, well-educated, rational woman…I know better than to pick at a pimple – particularly a horn pimple; yet, it never fails that despite knowing better I end up picking at it. I cannot help myself. It just emerges as such a huge mound and it is hard to let it be.

Well, last week I got a horn pimple. It wasn’t smack dab in the middle of my forehead, it was a tish to the left, but it was a mound of mammoth proportions to be sure. Of course I picked at it obsessively. I could not help it. It was the size of a pea, but where it sat on my face it felt epic (I could swear it rivaled Mount Vesuvius). After I made it look really bad I took to pulling my hair over it. I looked like Cousin It from the Addams Family…it was, in a word, pitiful.

Thank goodness the emergence occurred on Friday and I was able to stay home the next couple of days. Today the evidence of its picked presence is still there, but it is flat and more easily hidden by my hair. You would think that in the new forty I would be immune to pimples. Hello…it’s not like I am seventeen…who gets pimples when they are my age?

It might be understandable if I had gotten pimples as a kid, but I didn’t. I had maybe a handful of pimples in my life up until the age of 22, and then I had a baby and I have not enjoyed a pimple free month since. Seriously…they never tell you that kids cause pimples – stretch marks, yes – not a word about horn pimples – not a single word!!

If kids are going to cause horn pimples the least that Mother Nature could do is give you matching ones on each side of your head so at least you can tell your children when they are misbehaving that they are horns and you are the devil incarnate so they better behave. There should at least be a benefit from the dreadful things.

Alas, there is no logical reason that I can see to have horn pimples in the new forty aside from providing a reason for folks to ogle the monolith in the middle of my forehead and wonder why the hell an intelligent, well-educated, rational woman like myself felt a need to pick it and make it worse. Either that or they wonder what the heck I am doing with my hair these days.

Day one hundred and thirty-four of the new forty – obla di obla da

CC