The phone call came in during the early morning hours. \u201cCashman, it\u2019s me,\u201d said the voice on the other end. \u201cI\u2019ve got to cancel our lunch today.\u201d It was my old friend D.W. Clark, whose name \u2013 for the purposes of maintaining his anonymity here \u2013 I will change to D.W. Flark.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been planning this lunch get-together for weeks,\u201d I protested. \u201cYou can\u2019t drop out now.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSorry, man,\u201d he replied. \u201cA thing has come up.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat do you mean, a thing?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
He was quiet for a moment, and then muttered, \u201cIt\u2019s something big. That\u2019s all I can say.\u201d Then he hung up.<\/p>\n
It all didn\u2019t add up, so I got in my car and drove directly to his house. I knocked on the front door and a woman answered the door. It was D.W.\u2019s wife.<\/p>\n
\u201cHi there, Mrs. Flark,\u201d I said. She stared at me and then replied, \u201cFlark? Where\u2019d you come up with that?\u201d<\/p>\n
I ignored her question for the purposes of maintaining her anonymity and said, \u201cWhat\u2019s up with D.W.? He canceled our lunch appointment.\u201d<\/p>\n
She shrugged. \u201cYou can ask him yourself,\u201d she said as she waved me into the house.<\/p>\n
When I found him, it was immediately evident what \u201cthing\u201d had come up. My mouth agape, I stared at a behemoth sitting front and center, directly between D.W.\u2019s eyes. It was the mother of all zits. No, not merely the mother. It was the entire extended family of all zits \u2013 a pimple so gigantic that I couldn\u2019t believe D.W. could still hold his neck erect.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t a headlight, it was a searchlight. If it had stood out any taller, D.W. might have passed for a unicorn.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t mean to make a zit into a molehill, \u201c I stammered. \u201cBut you look like a two-headed man.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTell me about it,\u201d he said. \u201cCan you believe this monster? It\u2019s Godzitta!\u201d Then, as if I might have missed it, he pointed to it.<\/p>\n
I tried to sound optimistic. \u201cIf you put some makeup on it,\u201d I offered, \u201cit\u2019ll hardly be noticeable.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMakeup?\u201d he said hopefully.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, \u201cI said. \u201cI could pick you up a couple of gallons at Costco.\u201d<\/p>\n
He winced, but there was no denying the fact that we were in the presence of a doozy. I have seen prize-winning tomatoes smaller than that thing, although few of them as red.<\/p>\n
Pimples and acne, of course, have long been the great scourge of growing up for lots of kids \u2013 especially cruel at a time in their lives when they\u2019re most insecure. Luckily, by the time most of us become adults, pimples are usually no longer an everyday malady, but just an occasional, unwelcome surprise. Sort of like a drop-in visit from a neighbor with a new Amway business.<\/p>\n
Still, when an unexpected blotch comes along in adulthood, it brings back all the old, horrible feelings that D.W. was having that day.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I\u2019ll just go into hiding for a while,\u201d he said. \u201cThis thing ought to clear up in a year or two.\u201d<\/p>\n
I tried to cheer him up. \u201cMaybe you and your new companion can drive in the carpool lanes,\u201d I said. It didn\u2019t seem to help.<\/p>\n
D.W. said he first noticed \u201cElephant Man Jr.\u201d developing the night before, changing moment by moment, like the guy in the movie, \u201cThe Fly.\u201d But at least that guy was lucky enough to skip the pupa stage.<\/p>\n
D.W. remembered attending a movie and complaining to his wife that he couldn\u2019t see the screen well because the person in front of him had such a large head. There was, of course, no such person sitting in front of him.<\/p>\n
That night, D.W. slept fitfully. He had a dream about a twin he never knew existed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I woke up in the morning and made my horrifying discovery,\u201d he said, \u201cit reminded me of the horse head scene in \u2018The Godfather.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah,\u201d I said. \u201cExcept the horse didn\u2019t have a zit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pat Cashman is a writer, actor and public speaker. He can be reached at pat@patcashman.com.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The phone call came in during the early morning hours. \u201cCashman, it\u2019s me,\u201d said the voice on the other end. \u201cI\u2019ve got to cancel our lunch today.\u201d It was my old friend D.W. Clark, whose name \u2013 for the purposes of maintaining his anonymity here \u2013 I will change to D.W. Flark.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":214,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21438"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/214"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21438\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21438"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=21438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}