Dealing with Acne through the Ages

You may not want to read this entry while eating, or cleaning out gross parts of your house, like the lavatory, or for that matter maybe you should avoid reading this post while playing board games with your family, while analyzing the billiard rooms and possible laboratories and libraries that have odd weapons of murder used by such characters as Colonel Mustard or Lieutenant Plumb or Captain Scarlett, with the red dress ... (sorry, I got officers on my mind: I was around a few not too long ago...). Thinking it over ahead of time, which is hard to do just based on the title and the few words that I have shared so far, maybe you should stop reading this at all; it may turn out to be a grand waste of time.

However, if I have piqued your curiosity, please read on, gentle reader. (I don't mean to presume how gentle or rough you are individually or psychologically or however you consider yourself; that is just an expression that I probably picked up from Marvel comic books in the 1980s,  some of which I purchased going back to the 1970s or before.) Stan Lee, you did your thing!

Anyway, back to pimples and zits. You are forewarned.

 

Wow, I am talking skin issues and comic books in the same post. I am that guy. I am either really lame or really cool, or a phantasmagorical combination of both.

 

But, before I get into the subject that has a lot to do with acne, two more caveats. 

1. As disgusting and possibly distasteful as this subject may appear and actually end up being, (mind you, about normal skin aberrations), I know assuredly it is not as nasty and truly dirty as some of the things that I recently heard driving for a few hours over the weekend with part time soldiers in a government truck. Some of what I heard or overheard and even questioned about directly would curl your toes, and if that is all it wound up doing, then call it a good day and have a sound night's sleep. Put it another way, my discussion will be so pedestrian compared to other things out there, that I have been exposed to as of late as I alluded to, that people have the gall to share and entertain, you may not believe the grossness factor of my essay that I am currently suggesting. By the way, the ickiest of the things that I heard has me wanting to get motivated to bow to the earth, pray to God the Almighty and Just, and clean out my own soul of the foulness, and then pray for the minds and the souls of those who shared of their putrid actions and experiences on this road excursion. For the record, they were non-commissioned officers (NCOs) who waxed egregiously; they as a standard are not held to the same loftier standards of the aforementioned officers, like Majors and Generals. Sergeants are earthier, harsher, "realer". A misnomer, I know. Also, for the record, some officers, even NCOs, are also gentlemen and ladies. Yes, gentle, or genteel, in the classic sense. I seek after these people when not confined to an assigned seat going to and fro in military transport.

 

2.  Even though I put "through the ages" in my title, this article is not as expansive as it may sound. This is not an in-depth treatise on the history of oily skin across the centuries.  Sorry if I got your hopes up. The acne accounts will mostly be in relation to my ages in life, personally, as in my teens (see Marvel comics years), twenties (see dude who thought he had the international future), thirties (see the guy who found a lovely wife and started bringing other lifeforms into the world), forties (see the aging chap who stopped having little baby earthlings and did more to figure out how to feed them and give them things, that some would call important or vital). In anticipation of ... the fifties!!??

 

Yeah, that is what this is really about. Turning fifty. Five zero. The big one. Life changer, going down hill in many ways, but going up in others. Is fifty the new thirty five? Who knows? What is an age? It means some things, for sure.

All I know is that I remember every age since three or so. So inside (I am pointing to my chest, in my mind's eye, in a box, with a fox), I am still 5, 8, 11, 15, 19, 23, and on till now. I almost have enough foresight to be 60, but that is like a future Star Wars film, perhaps never to be ...

The Oily Years

Growing up with two older sisters plus two parents and a lot of cousins and uncles and aunts and even great-aunts that were pretty open about gooey and icky stuff like zits and cycles and barf and diapers and mucus and fake milk, like Nutramagen or Persobe with our foster babies, (those really stank!), plus some pretty crude and lewd neighborhood and church buddies, I was aware of the zit thing for those in the puberty stages.

 

I managed to survive the middle school years without a lot of blemishes of the skin. I had other issues as I grew and "matured", but not much oily skin. I noted the imperfections of my poor sisters, both very pretty, but even as a fifth grader I had fun with the teen language vocab, on long road trips: "Zits! Pimples!" I enjoyed watching my sisters squirm with discomfort, as my words hit too close to home at a time when they did not need or ask for a little brother to remind them of things so ribald and banal. Yep, little brother was I.

We all survived middle school, while my parents' marriage did not; they say stress can make you break out. I was due. Just the weekend or so before my freshman year of high school, I woke up with some sore discolored protuberances on my face. Acne, welcome to my world! 1985, what a nice time to live. Gorbachev took control of the Soviet Union by then, for some context.

I went throughout high school learning to wash closer and pop these unwelcomed visitors when needed: the whiteheads, the black heads, those that are hard to describe. I remember seeing a plump whitehead on the back of the neck of my buddy Tom at Scout camp. I offered to pop it, and I did. Sounds gross, I know, but as a father and soldier learning Combat Life Saving (First Aid) all these decades later, lancing that pimple at age 14 or so for a friend was a cool thing to do, I maintain. We were waiting in the line to the camp cafeteria, anyway, downtime; I was going to wash my hands right then, anyway, right? 

Made it to Provo and then Chile, South America, for my two year mission, and the zits kept coming. I remember thinking things like," I am 19, 20, getting out of my teens; surely this will be over with in my twenties, like when I am off my mission."

Nope. On to Indiana University, and then to Brigham Young University and work in Utah, and then back to IU in my hometown Bloomington, and the acne was still there. All my twenties. Never too bad ... I had some girlfriends; I am pretty confident that the zits were not the game breakers. But the acne would not stop. I recall having some conversations with my older sister as she was a young mother of her first two girls, two years older than me and a full functioning adult. "No, Eddie, we still got 'em" she would exclaim with a cheesy grin. Thanks for that, Jen. (I later married a Jen, so don't let that confuse you. Speaking of Jens, I can't help but think God made every Jen a choice gift on the earth. I cannot think of an exception, can you? I digress...)

Making my way in California and back to South America for a minute, then over to Virginia and trips to Missouri and Arizona for months at a time; I still found myself in front of mirrors on sunny and rainy and cold and warm days, zits to manage. Some people say "picking zits". I don't, I think that handling whiteheads and blackheads is natural and normal, and sometimes not even that gross. It is like brushing your teeth, or shaving, or scrubbing your toes or cleaning out fingernails. We are like cars, we need to get lubricated and have parts removed and cleaned, get parts restored or re-done. Nothing too gross, but with time and age, into the forties, the acne was reduced but did not stop.

Sorry to disappoint anyone who looks forward to a day in their middle age without acne, I have not found it. But that is OK; it is normal. Shower, shave, primp, clean, whatever. Eat right, drink water.

I turn fifty this week; I woke up this morning with a large whitehead on my neck. (Ok, maybe this makes you nauseous, too much information, i.e. "DAD!" (Eye roll). But I saw it, knew what to do, took care of it. I have been doing this since 1985. What were you doing in 1985? I was getting advice from Scott Dunning in the high school bathroom right before anthropology with Mr. Bellesis third period, him showing me how to squeeze the sore ones just right and then be over with it, carefully and antiseptically. Thanks Scott. I did not know you much outside of school, but you left me part of your legacy. Maybe you had a southern Indiana sibling or cousin who taught you. Thanks. Good looking out.

So, yeah, more than the external, this acne subject is about the internal. We all have interior and exterior clocks, we all have bio-rhythms, we all have plans, goals, aims, hopes, dreams, missions, assignments, duties. Sometime we push a broom, sometimes we drive a truck, sometimes we rake leaves or shovel snow.

And sometimes we face ourselves in the mirror, and we see that we are not perfect, but that is okay. No matter what age or skin condition you are dealing with, you are all right.

Wrinkles are signs of beauty, so are birth scars. I have a few scars, and they build character, right?

Hormones and testosterone and estrogen and a hundred other chemicals and enzymes: we are a gangly mess and a beautiful heap of cells and exfoliated skin and hair and laughs and tears.

So, that is my message: dealing with acne through the ages is a beautiful thing. I am grateful for oily skin. Maybe I will not have too many in my fifties ... But maybe then I will miss that occasional bump on my thigh or my knee, or that part of the back that I cannot reach...

 

I am thankful that God made us so imperfect as to have these faults and imperfections. They are reminders of greater things to achieve, higher hills and mountains to ascend.

 

In the end there is nothing better than a body with its sores and aches. Nothing too severe, just subtle reminders that there is a lot worse out there than blemishes of the epidermis. Our bodies are temples; we are blessed to keep them clean, to notice when faults are afoot. We are grateful for the process of age where we bring new lives into our worlds; we keep going through the ages. 1, 10, 30, 50. And if we're lucky and blessed, a few more.