Cocoa Pop Giggle Laugh Chortle

Today I went to the dermatologist.

Now there's an exciting way to start a blog post...I never claimed to be entertaining all the time, did I?

Apparently I am an over-achiever in all aspects of my life, including in the growing and harbouring of moles (and does that not sound delicious?) Once a year I pretend I am a good little Australian (where skin cancers are no laughing matter) and I have a very nice woman with very cold hands inspect every inch of my skin to make sure none of my tiny little round friends have decided to become either not tiny or not round.

I'm no big fan of doctors per se, but doctors who tell you to strip off and then inspect around your cha-cha are especially not my favourites, so I was feeling a little giggly and nervous about it (which is ridiculous, but there you go.)  First point of discussion was a small chocolate brown mole which lives right in the middle of my right clavicle. It's irritated me for a long time because it's marring what is otherwise an entirely perfect and sexy part of my body (of which I only have just the one, so I'm a little protective of it.) The kids call this mole my "cocoa pop" because that's what it looks like. As though a tiny little chocolate rice bubble has just jumped up and landed in the middle of my clavicle.

While I am there listing my various skin ailments to nice derma-doctor, I start to giggle like an idiot as I open my mouth and say, "And yeah, so, I'd like to get rid of my cocoa pop." "Your what?" "My cocoa pop." (I temporarily forgot that nobody but my immediate family has even heard this expression.) "Ok, where is this...cocoa pop?" So I show her, and she looks at it, and says, "Hmm. You know what? It really looks like a cocoa pop," and for the rest of the appointment it was all, "Okay, so you'll feel a little sting right next to your cocoa pop," and "I'll just send this cocoa pop off to the lab now," and "I'm going to put a bandage where your cocoa pop was."

Dear patient after me: sorry. She's a good doctor, really. I promise.

The first part of my appointment I spent laughing about a stray bit of cereal on my clavicle. The next bit I spent laughing because once she had inspected my front she told me to "lay on my stomach with arms up as though you are sun baking."

Sun baking? Was she serious? This is Australia, home of the slip-slop-slap-seek-slide! The place where they tell you the ozone hole is RIGHT on top of. The place where sadly skin cancer is an epidemic.  And the SKIN doctor is telling me to assume the sun baking position? I'll admit it, I totally lost the plot here and dissolved into giggles again, which only made HER laugh, and she explained that everyone knows what she means when she tells them to do that. She the admitted she did feel the slightest microscopic twinge of guilt when she used that expression. It seems somehow disloyal to her profession and all.

$350, an hour, minus one dodgy mole and minus one cocoa pop later, and I had the most entertaining afternoon I've had in a long while.

Clearly, I'm easily amused.