(SNN) I went to see my Dermatologist recently. Nice guy. Fingers of velvet. Excellent bedside manner, even if it’s a Murphy Bed with Murphy still in it.

My skin is important to me, and not just because it keeps stuff from falling out of my body. For more than a decade I earned a handsome living as a professional skin model at *Bob’s Medical School.  It was a great gig.

Dr. Robert Feedon-Snuckle, Chair of the Epidermis, Appendicitis and Onomatopoeia Department at BMS, hired me each semester to come in and parade around before medical students nude from the waist up.  

Let me rephrase that. I was the one nude from the waist up. The students were fully clothed. Dr. Feedon-Snuckle was stunning in a strapless taffeta gown and riding boots.

The object of the exercise was for the students to try to identify my torso’s blemishes. This counted 20% of their final grade.

Due to bad luck and unfortunate DNA, I sport a world-class crop of benign Seborrheic Keratoses. That’s both a skin disorder and a popular eggplant dish at many fine Italian restaurants. The term is Latin for “You look like hell, but don’t worry, it’s not Cancer.” These outcroppings, escarpments and promontories are also called “Senility Warts,“ so they don’t pop up until your warts are senile.

The crop of craggy growths covering my torso made me one of the top Seborrheic Keratosis models in the continental U.S. and all the ships at sea.  

Skin doctors will tell you it’s a good idea to have them checked every year to certify no deadly visitors are lurking among them. I was told there is no specific odd shape or color to Keratoses. I have several that look like game show hosts and one that’s a dead-ringer for a 1952 Buick Roadmaster.

My career as a blemish model ended in 2011. It was my own fault.  During my presentation, I got bored and I broke into a popular sea shanty called “Who Cleaned the Poop Deck?”

“Keelhaul the Bosun’s mate,

And please bring me my Daiquiri

Scrape off my Barnacles

Then you can read your Thackeray.”

Should have picked a different sea shanty.  Turns out “Barnacles” is the nickname for the Keratoses that be-clutter my midriff and I was canned for sabotaging the professor’s exam.

After BMS’s ruthless dismissal, I started going to my new skin guy. He checks me over, renews my prescribed unguents, and sings a more than passable high-lonesome harmony on my sea shanties. I’d tell you his name, but let’s not challenge that injunction yet, shall we?

My new doctor is nothing if not cautious in the examining room. Today he was fully equipped for adolescent acne season, wearing welder’s glasses and a London Fog lab coat over his bespoke suit. The good doctor doesn’t abide popping pimples propelling puss at his pie-hole.

We ended my visit with the traditional “Daubing of the Skin Tags” routine. The Doctor puts a dollop of frozen nitrogen in a Styrofoam cup and uses a Q-Tip to “freeze” my skin tags and remove them. The procedure rarely rids you of a skin tag, but the crusty white residue it leaves makes them much easier to find in the dark.

Once my Doc accidentally took off a “Do not remove under penalty of law” Tag and may yet end up in the pokey.

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* “Bob’s Medical School” is not the actual name of the university, which has been changed so readers won’t suspect it’s Harvard or Dakota State.

Photo: Some Rights Reserved  by Steve Glover flickr photostream, The Sage nor this article endorsed. The original image can be located here.