family stuff and tag moles

It’s been nearly three weeks since my last post but in the words of Willie Nelson, “you were always on my mind.”  When I’ve had a moment or two, I’ve elected to check out what others of you are writing about instead of making my own posts.  However, it’s 93 degrees today and I’ve ventured out once already. A friend of mine had a birthday recently and I met her and her husband for lunch. I’m officially in for the rest of today, air conditioning cranked up, and a big glass of ice water in hand. Ensconced in front of my computer, I’m ready to write.

 

But what to write about… world affairs…the political shenanigans at the NC General Assembly…Paris Hilton…more about my online dating adventures? Such important topics (okay, maybe not Paris Hilton, but my online dating adventures are certainly of importance) but they pale in comparison to the interesting conversation that I had with my sister last night.

 

My sister and her husband live less than a mile from me. I selected the location for my house because she was already living in the neighborhood.  We talk almost daily, usually by telephone. Her husband, Bob, cannot fathom why we don’t just visit in person and he is particularly baffled by our habit of watching television programs together over the telephone.  My response is simple; I know what she looks like and I don’t have to be looking at her in order to have a good visit.  Besides, when I get home from a long day at work, I like to get comfortable—kick off my shoes, remove those pesky undergarments, and slip into my favorite caftan.  It’s at home attire but not visiting attire.

 

So last night, after getting comfortable, I called my sister or maybe she called me; we talk so often it’s hard to know who calls whom. We talked about the usual stuff—which one of our parents is crazier, which one of us had last spoken with our mother (my father doesn’t answer the telephone and as a rule he doesn’t engage in telephone conversations), and whether Aunt Nellie Ruth or Aunt Dorothy is nuttier.

 

(Let me digress for a moment and allow you to decide for yourself.  Our Aunt Nellie Ruth is 78 years old and a widow.  She lives alone and even in this 93 degree weather, she will not open the windows for fear that some man may break in and molest her. Fortunately, one of her daughters has persuaded her to allow an A/C unit to be installed in one apartment window but she often doesn’t turn it on because she says it bothers her arthritis. Visiting her is like stepping into Dante's Inferno. Our Aunt Dorothy is in her early seventies, divorced, and lives alone in New York.  She has considered moving back to NC to be nearer to Aunt Nellie, my mom, and their sister Mabel, but she worries that people will think that she’s chasing after Eugene, a former boyfriend from her youth.  She hasn’t seen him in over fifty years but she knows that he still pines for her. It’s hard to choose which one is nuttier than Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, but I think that Aunt Dorothy has the edge because she also believes in root working and is continually wary that someone is trying to cast a spell on her or give her the evil eye. At family gatherings she smells all the food and refuses to eat dishes that she doesn’t know who prepared.)

 

Okay, let’s get back to my conversation with my sister.

 

My sister says, apropos of nothing, “Do you remember that mole on my neck?”

 

I don’t remember any mole but she doesn’t really need a response so I just say, “Huh?”

 

“I read this article that says that you can get rid of those tag moles (AKA skin tags) by tying a string around them.”

 

“Huh?”

 

“It cuts off the blood supply and eventually the tag mole just falls off.”

 

My sister has been under a great deal of work related stress lately and I attributed the mole discussion to that stress.

 

“Anyway, a couple of nights ago I decided to tie a string around the mole on my neck, but I couldn’t remember what type of string the article recommended that you use.  At first I was going to use dental floss but then I decided that I didn’t want a piece of dental floss hanging from my neck, so I used a piece of blue sewing thread.”

 

By now, I was really listening. She tied a piece of thread tightly around her neck! Thoughts of gangrene, flesh eating bacteria, and my sister’s head falling off ran through my mind but I tried not to become hysterical. “Oh my God! You tied string around your neck!”

 

“Not around my neck, around the mole.”

 

My vision changed somewhat; her whole head wasn’t going to fall off just a big chunk of her neck.

 

“Of course, once I got it tied off and looked in the mirror, I realized that I didn’t want to walk around with blue thread dangling from my neck but I had knotted the thread and I couldn’t figure out how to remove it. So I cut the dangling ends as short as I could and put a Band-Aid over it.”

 

Maybe with plastic surgery it wouldn’t be so bad or she could always wear scarves.

 

“Have you seen a doctor?” I inquired calmly.

 

“A doctor? No, you won’t believe what happened.”

 

A piece of your neck fell off and you have a gaping hole where flesh and muscle used to be? I kept my thoughts to myself, “So what happened?”

 

“Well after a couple of days, I took the Band-Aid off just to check and the mole fell away, just like that.”

 

“No hole in your neck?”

 

“Hole in my neck, what are you talking about? Of course there is no hole in my neck. It wasn’t that big of a mole.”

 

“Oh.”

 

There was a lot more drama in my imagined version.

 

 

 

Tags: family, relatives, siblings, tag moles, humor