The other morning I felt a slight twinge in my lower right lip. It was a tingling sensation I haven’t had for almost twenty years.
It was a feeling I used to stare up at the ceiling with tears in my eyes as I slowly raised my pointer finger to my lip to confirm what I already knew. I had a cold sore. It was going to be ugly, it was going to spread and it was going to hurt.
For the purposes of this blog, I asked my Mom to dig up an old school photo (filed under “bad paid for photos”) where I was sporting a cold sore. As I had suspected, she didn’t have to look very far. In fact, she arrived on my doorstep with a Rubber Maid bin full of cold sore pics, so big it took two people to lug into my front hallway.
If you’re wondering why we didn’t have re-takes? In the 80’s you got one picture taken for the year. If you were unfortunate enough to misread the picture day instructions and wear your pyjamas that day rather than your Sunday best or choose not to comb your hair—tough. It’s not like today where the schools have a full time staff photographer and new glamour shots of the kids come home on a weekly basis.
When I was a kid there were many explanations as to why I was getting these unpredictable, all consuming, throbbing, painful visitors, one of which was sugar. My Mom must have been wearing ear-muffs while the other potential contributors were being tossed around; stress, lack of sleep, excessive acid in my stomach, early injury where my tooth went through my lip in the same spot I would get cold sores. If we could blame something in life on sugar, we were going to. Even better if it could be linked to fast food restaurants. Still, it seemed odd given the only sugar we were permitted was a ¼ teaspoon of brown sugar sprinkled over a Shredded Wheat log that had been saturated in boiling water, drained and then dowsed with cold milk. That ¼ teaspoon by the way was shared among the four kids in my family. It was also only brought out if it happened to be one of our birthdays.
I tried everything to get rid of them but popping a cold sore will only get you more cold sores.
I dabbed cotton swabs with rubbing alcohol and pressed them onto my lip causing a fiery sensation, followed by enormous cracks in the skin that had made contact and a boozy/medicinal flavour I became accustomed to at an early age.
I held used tea bags over the blisters because somebody somewhere read that used tea bags worked on cankers so surely they would work on cold sores. They didn’t. They turned my red lip brown and gave me withdrawal-shakes (in kindergarten) by mid afternoon when everyone else was napping.
When I look back on my class photos now, each with a bigger lower lipped balloon than the year prior, I can’t believe I had any friends. The funny thing is, I remember that kid and I was happy!
The pictures actually remind me of real conversations we had as kids when we would ask our friends things like, “If I had dog fur instead of skin, would you still talk to me?” or, “If I had an extra leg but was short one elbow, would you still talk to me?” How is it that I never asked, “If my lip was the size of a watermelon and looking in my direction risked contaminating yourself, would you still be my friend?”
Nobody seemed to care.
I’m trying to teach my kids, there might be things in life you won’t like about yourself (though, I can’t think of any). The key is to never let it define who you are. Have a sense of humour about the way you might perceive imperfections and never let it stand in the way of you being your best self.
This is me in grade five. I might have also been responsible for grooming my own bangs.
