I am a Gross Person

For the following reasons -

I babysit for a family with four children every Friday. This has been consistent for the past year, and I've enjoyed being with the children because of their exuberance and unpredictability. They are all unique in their own right, and one child in particular is especially hilarious with his anecdotes as he shares his perceptions of the world with adults.

An example -

A few months ago, Matthew and I were at the family's house for dinner. We were dating at the time and not yet engaged. Isaac was having trouble figuring out how Matthew and I were both adults and spent time together but weren't married. And so, as dinner neared an end, Isaac ran away from the table to play and came up to me a moment later. He asked me to bend down and whispered in my ear, "Loywa, is Matthew yo' seestee?" (since he doesn't understand "boyfriend", obviously "sister" is a logical label).

Then, last week after babysitting for them again, I was speaking with Isaac's mother. She and I were exchanging his funny stories and sayings and right before I left the house she told me this last one: A few weeks ago, Isaac asked her if she had hairy armpits like "Lowya does". He was obvious confused over the fact that "Lowya is not married to Matthew and she has haiwy awmpits". He then asked his mom if she had hairy armpits like Laura did.

Hmph.

I approached Isaac about that conversation today. He and I were playing legos on his floor and I decided it was time to discuss the elephant in the room. As he haphazardly put together a makeshift robot out of the miniature legos, I toyed with my lego helicopter and said, "Isaac, did you tell your mom that I have hairy armpits?"

"Yes," he said. My face turned bright red.

"Why did you tell her that?" I bit my lip and started to take my helicopter apart.

"Because you do." He threw his robot into the lego pile and moved on to another toy. I sat and pouted for a moment.

I went to the dermatologist about a month ago due to what I call chronic dry skin and a smattering of blemishes. She put me on a strict regiment that I've followed, with which I've had good results. Until recently.

I believe my shampoo and conditioner have, of late, adversely affected the skin around my hairline. This includes small bumps that are not white heads but do not disappear, even with the Aczone I rub into them nightly.

BUT

today I sat in my silver Honda outside the apartment after driving back downtown and looked in the mirror to notice these bumps were actually blackheads. Huge ones! I couldn't believe my eyes. I then proceeded to eliminate all of them from the surface of my skin. Thank goodness I'm parked behind an SUV, I momentarily thought.

Then, I found a huge one. And the only reason I say this is because you mustn't imagine the actual blackhead but rather the entire situation. I was sitting in my car, poking at my face and suddenly my eyes got wide as I inspected the tip of my finger. Then, embarrassingly enough, I actually contemplated whether or not to send a picture of the blackhead to Matthew (when we first met, we were amazed at how much dead skin you can rip off your leg after a sunburn, so I thought it was fitting). I even got my phone out to see if I could take a quality picture to show the size against my fingertip.

But, I decided not to send him the picture in the end. I did something further disgusting, like flicked the thing somewhere, and then I began to put my phone back in my purse. As I leaned over to do that, I glanced out the window and saw two girls my age sitting on a cinder block fence, ten feet away from me. They were polite enough to pretend they didn't know I was directly in front of them, but we briefly made eye contact so that I'm certain they saw the entire episode. And there they sat, just as if nothing happened! One, with her long blonde hair in a headband and a teal t-shirt on, and the other in houndstooth or the like, and both just glancing around at the trees and sky with smirks on their faces.

What was I supposed to do? I grabbed my laptop case and coffee traveler and quickly got out of the car, with my dignity destroyed and the side of my face swollen from prodding.