That ball of fire in the sky means business

That ball of fire in the sky means business
                        

As medical procedures go, it was rather primitive, and that didn’t make me feel any less nervous as the needle neared my eye socket.

My field of vision was severely limited since I was wearing a brown paper bag on my head, an eyehole ripped in one section.

From plunger to tip, the syringe measured 6 or 7 inches, not that scary, unless you were the one waiting for the local anesthesia to be administered in a spot you’d rather not see a needle poised.

“Just relax,” the dermatologist said. “I’m not jabbing it right into your eyeball. Just going to numb the area … then I’ll start cutting.”

“Good to know,” I said, breathing through the paper bag, my respirations a bit rapid, owing to the stress of the procedure.

This was years and years ago, back when I believed myself to be if not bulletproof, then certainly superior to most indignities life might eventually visit on my corporeal being, ectomorph that I was.

It was the woman who’d cut my hair since the early '80s who sounded the first warning. She was a friend of long-standing loyalty, someone who shot from the hip when something was on her mind. Cutting my hair was mostly secondary in our bond.

“That mole under your left eye looks different than it did last time,” she said, leaning into chop a hunk of hair off my ear.

“So?” I asked. “Doesn’t hurt or anything. What’s the problem?”

She stood back and straightened, her hands on her hips.

“Skin cancer,” she said. “That’s the problem. Get it checked out.”

A month and a biopsy later, a scalpel excised the basal carcinoma.

I don’t know precisely when the human race determined prolonged exposure to the sun was a surefire way to appear youthful and vigorous, but the idea’s been around for ages.

Buried deep inside the medulla oblongata, it’s probably linked to some sort of primordial propagation-of-the-species instinct, the kind that led to Coppertone, bikinis and “The Boys of Summer.”

“But I can see you,

Your brown skin shining in the sun,

You got your hair pulled back and

Your sunglasses on, baby.”

That song, recorded in 1984 by Don Henley of the Eagles and written by Mike Campbell of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers, remains — to my way of thinking, anyway — the pinnacle achievement of capturing what the end of summer looks and feels like perfectly.

But it wouldn’t even exist, had it not been for Brian Wilson.

Without his imagination and creativity, there’d be no summer music, no hint of “The Warmth of the Sun,” no place like “In My Room” to ponder life, nothing approaching “Fun, Fun, Fun” as we considered “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” even as “Caroline, No” faded and we understood that “Help Me, Rhonda” was an unlikely wish.

God reached down and touched Brian Wilson’s heart and soul, providing the Beach Boys a chance to make summertime their own.

In the '60s, Brian Wilson — who hated the ocean — opened a door to eternal youth, the pursuit of the perfect wave and sun-tanned love.

I, of course, sought privacy as I communed with the sun, climbing the roof of the house with a towel, shades and a transistor radio.

CKLW came in great up there as I facilitated the tanning process with Johnson’s Baby Oil, the rough equivalent of Crisco cut with lighter fluid, a tip I must have picked up in one of my sister’s Tiger Beat magazines. For her part, she’d go next door to use the neighbor’s Hot Box, a foil-wrapped enclosure guaranteed to bronze every inch of exposed skin. Even my mother — as translucent an Irishwoman as ever walked the planet — got in on the tanning craze, lathering on a cream called Q.T., for Quick Tan.

Vanity? Perhaps, but there were worse ways to chase an illusion.

I always felt kind of bad for my brother, who, on the first afternoon of our Virginia Beach vacation, overdid it and had to spend the next three days isolated in the Princess Anne Hotel, a victim of such a severe sunburn I almost forgot he was along for the ride.

My complexion was more conducive to accepting and holding a summer tan, a genetic gift I didn’t seek but was happy to accept.

This, then, is the first summer in 23 years I haven’t been to the beach at all, owing to the fact my wife and I moved back to Ohio from Carolina in January, a decision I’m sure was smart but one that has produced, nonetheless, ocean withdrawal symptoms.

I miss “toes in the sand by 9 o’clock,” our mission statement, and the way we had the whole place nearly to ourselves before the hordes came traipsing over the dunes, bringing noise and chaos.

And I miss my suntan, that superficial security blanket, one that whispered, “I may not be wealthy, but I look like I just might be.”

Then I remember the scalpel and the rasping sound it made as it cut my flesh, and the dermatologist digging deep into the epidermal layer, removing the last traces of my arrogant conceit.

Mike Dewey can be reached at Carolinamiked@aol.com or 1317 Troy Road, Ashland, OH 44805. He invites you to find him on Facebook, where no one ever compares tans or other inadequacies.


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