Kansas City Freelance Writer Liz Craig

He was one of “Twelve Angry Men,” a visitor to “The Twilight Zone,” a slob in “The Odd Couple,” and a doctor in “Quincy, M.E.” And before that, a Broadway star in “Gypsy.” But to me, he’ll always be the guy who couldn’t pronounce “Ak-Sar-Ben” to save his life. I’m talking about Jack Klugman. He died the other day, and when I saw the notice, a shock ran through me, because I knew Jack.

Let me backtrack a little. As a horseman, Jack was a perfect spokesman for Ak-Sar-Ben racetrack, a client of the advertising agency where I worked as a writer/producer at the time. Amazingly, he agreed to do a set of TV spots for us for a reasonable fee. It must have been the horse connection that sealed the deal.

Before Jack arrived, we were instructed that he must have an excellent toupee stylist available on the set at all times. Wow, I thought. Was this guy going to be a handful? I was a little scared to meet him. He was a big star, and I was an Omaha writer/producer charged with keeping him content and doing his best job for what was probably a fraction of his normal fee.

The first day of shooting, I brought bagels to the set. Poor Jack, who had arisen at 6 a.m. (4 a.m. California time), was greeted on Day One by fruit-flavored bagels (the only kind I could find the night before at Albertson’s). “Blueberry! Strawberry! These aren’t bagels!” First the demand for the toupee stylist, now the dissatisfaction with our Midwestern bagels. How difficult was our Hollywood star going to be?

But my fears were quickly dispelled once we started shooting. Jack took direction without a fuss, and he was open and easy to talk to, particularly when a couple of attractive young women from the agency came to visit him on the set. He enjoyed joking and chatting with his star-struck fans until we called him for the next scene.

During the shoot, the one thing that bugged him was something rather important: the name of the client. Take after take, he struggled unsuccessfully to pronounce it. “ARK-si-bin!” “Come on out to As-KIB-In!” “Awk-SER-ban!” Frustrated after a series of blown takes, he turned to me and pleaded, “Aw, honey, we don’t have to keep saying the name, do we?” Unhelpfully, I told him it was “Nebraska” spelled backward. Eventually, he got the name right, and in the finished spots, Jack’s personality and enthusiasm shone through every scene.

One day, while the crew set up for the next scene, Jack decided to bet on a race or two. I thought, “Wow, Jack knows the horses. I’ll bet with him.” So I bet the same horses he did (with one-tenth the money). We both lost, but what the hey. I got to bet with Jack Klugman.

When I read accounts of his death, I learned he had agreed to do “Quincy, M.E.” because he hoped to do stories that focused on issues like preventing child abuse and rape. His social conscience put him at odds with his producer, who didn’t think viewers wanted to see shows about those subjects. But Jack was right. “Quincy, M.E.” was the first of a new genre of popular crime-detection shows focusing on those and other social issues, among them “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” and “Law & Order: Criminal Intent.”

In the 1980s, Jack pushed hard to get the Orphan Drug Act passed. In fact, he had his brother, Maurice, write two episodes of “Quincy, M.E.” about the problem that pharmaceutical companies weren’t inclined to spend money developing drugs for rare diseases like ALS and cystic fibrosis. The first episode acquainted the audience with the problem. The second dramatized the real-life battle Jack was having with Washington. A senator was holding up the bill, and after the episode, the bill finally passed. Jack used the power of his own convictions and the power of the media to help people with rare diseases. For more about his crusade, read this.

Most people don’t know about Jack’s dedication to social issues. In fact, many people think Jack was Oscar Madison of “The Odd Couple,” a shambling, sloppy loudmouth with green meat and brown cheese rotting in his fridge. That’s a tribute to his ability to make a bizarre character seem real. Jack was not Oscar. He was smart, talented, dedicated and socially conscious. But okay, he was a little disheveled-looking. Rreferring to Tony Randall, his “Odd Couple” co-star, he told me, “Tony has suits that are 30 years old. He brushes them, hangs them up, and they look like new. Me, I wear a new suit for two minutes, and it looks like it’s 30 years old.” He was funny, self-deprecating, and someone you wished you could keep on being friends with after the shoot was over.

I’ve worked with other well-known actors. But the one I remember most fondly is Jack Klugman. The natural everyman. The socially conscious actor. And the guy who couldn’t pronounce “Ak-Sar-Ben” to save his life.

Local newspapers are an endangered species, so I choose to subscribe to the KC Star and read it most mornings while I munch Rice Chex and sip coffee. But I’m beginning to wonder if reading it is such a keen idea.

This bright, sunny Sunday morning, I got a double whammy of depressing input. As I was reading the first section of the paper, I was listening to an episode of “This American Life” about how the settlers and Indians in Mankato, Michigan had attacked, murdered, and hanged thousands of each other in the 19th century.

In the paper, here are a few of the stories from this morning:

On the first page, there was a wonderful story about a family that had taken in homeless people, including a black student and a young family, and were helping them over the hump to a better life.

So much for the good news. Here’s the rest:

• Article about how KC Art Institute donors had reneged on a $7 million pledge because they now claim to be broke. KCAI is suing, since they’ve already built the building.
• Article about things breast cancer patients don’t know. I don’t even want to hear the words “breast cancer.” How about you?

Page A2:
• State Department headquarters blaze seriously injures three maintenance workers.
• Drug-seeking man arrested in Aurora, CO on Black Friday for shooting a hole in the ceiling of a Target store.

A4:
• Article about a couple who tortured a 16-year-old “sex slave”

A6:
• 17-year-old dies in car accident

You get the idea.

After all that news and information, I was ready to crawl back into bed and pull a pillow over my head.

The news is not going to start you out for the day with a smile on your lips and a song in your heart. And I’m not just talking about print news. Or even just the morning. The evening TV news is designed to give you nightmares all night long. The newscast starts with a tragedy (a baby injured in a rolling gun battle or a horrendous car accident), and then you see a reporter standing at the crime scene by a length of crime tape hours later, when the scene is obscured by darkness. And even if it weren’t, there’s NOTHING TO SEE! Well, there’s the crime tape.

“You Are There” was an old TV show from the 50s. It appears TV news operations are trying to bring you There, even when there’s no THERE there.

I recall Walt Bodine telling of an experience in the early days on the WDAF-TV news staff. He had been doing human interest stories, and his boss called him on the carpet and said, “What’s all this human interest stuff? I want BANG! BODIES!”

Why do we humans slow down to see a car accident? Why is the bad and the ugly considered “good news?” Why are human interest stories that lift the soul considered boring, and must-not-see TV, except maybe around the holidays? I imagine evolutionary lessons learned in millennia past make us study frightful things closely to make sure similar things don’t happen to us. We take the usual good or neutral news as the norm, so there’s no threat and no reason to take notice.

Maybe someday, bad news won’t be considered “good news.” In the meantime, if you read a newspaper or watch TV news, expect to see “BANG! BODIES!”

The word is out: too many keywords, and Google will zap you. Keyword-stuffing, the numbing repetition of keywords in blog posts, to the point of nausea, is, thank goodness, now out of favor with the Google Gods.

So what do you do to climb the ranks of Google?

• Have a blog on your website.
• And in your blog posts, use keywords. But sparingly.
• Make sure your keywords are ones people would logically use to find your company.
• Use two or three keywords in the context of a blog post that has real content, and another in the sign-off. Like this:

How much is a good roof worth?
By Liz Craig

If you’re buying or selling a house, you know that the quality of a house’s roof can dramatically increase or decrease its sale price.

That’s because if the roof is in poor condition, it can cause a lot of costly problems. Dampness, loss of heat, water leaks, and structural damage can all result from a bad roof. So even though the upfront cost of putting on a sound new roof is nothing to sneeze at, it can save you money on repairs in the long run.

If you’re not sure how sound your roof is, find a good roofing company to come out and check it out. Not just a guy on a ladder looking it over and saying, “Looks okay to me.” You should expect a full, professional assessment of your roof, including a close inspection of gutters and downspouts. Any problems with your roof or drainage should be fixed before they create bigger problems. When you use a reputable roofing company with good references, you’ll have peace of mind, and you’ll be able to maintain the value of your home.

Another reason to have your roof inspected by a professional roofing company: If you plan to sell your home, you don’t want a buyer’s survey to reveal problems with the roof that you didn’t know about, which lower the value of your home. Even if you’re not planning to sell, if you neglect needed roof repairs, you may have to pay higher homeowner’s insurance premiums or have trouble with the insurance company if you file a claim. So it’s a smart idea to keep an eye on roofing material for any signs of damage, check and clear gutters regularly, and make small repairs as soon as you notice any damage, so they don’t turn into big problems.

Liz Craig is a freelance writer who writes about roofing topics for ABC Roofing Company.

Blogging with relevant content is one of the most effective ways to get high rankings from Google. Blog content has to be brief, well-written, and interesting and helpful to the customers or clients you hope to attract.

You can’t make your blog posts “All About My Company.” You need to offer advice, tips, information, guidelines and so on, from your position as an expert in whatever industry you’re in. Be helpful. Be generous. Be heavy on relevance to the target audience (and current customers or subscribers) and sparing in your use of keywords. Oh — and this is vital — regular in your postings. That’s the way to optimize for Google without fear of the Google Gods zapping you off to Nowheresville. Which is Page 2 or lower.

Sometimes, companies’ blog posts are so old they’re festooned with spider webs. What a waste of a good marketing tool. The problem, I suppose, is that someone in the office who’s supposed to do it doesn’t have the time, the desire, or the ability to write and post blog entries on a regular basis. That’s where a professional writer can save the day. For an affordable price, the writer (in this case, me) can help you develop an ongoing blogging program that will help you climb the Google rankings ladder.

So, for help developing your fearlessly Google-optimized blog posts, give me a call.

Direct mail is one of those things people either hate or simply dislike. Why is that? Because most people get tons of direct mail that doesn’t offer anything they want. It simply isn’t relevant to them. Or maybe it is, but it takes the recipient too long to find out how. Either way, it’s headed for the landfill.

People decide within two or three seconds whether a piece of mail goes on the “opening” or “trash” pile, and then move on with their lives.

As an ad agency copywriter, I did mostly advertising, meaning ads, brochures, radio and TV spots. Advertising is a different animal from direct mail, I’ve learned, as I’ve had more opportunities to write direct. In advertising, you’re usually doing (a) awareness advertising, (b) image advertising, or (c) offer advertising, sometimes including a coupon. Of the three, (c) is most similar to direct mail. The offer-coupon ad wants you to do something, and it gives you both an incentive to do it and a time limit (Coupon expiration date).

The reason it’s called “direct” mail is that it comes directly to a prospect’s mailbox. Anyone writing for direct mail should keep in mind another reason: it has to communicate in a direct way in order to avoid the trashcan. And there is an art and science to doing it well.

That’s why most direct mail includes a “teaser” on the envelope, which is meant to get you to open it. Here are three teasers from direct mail pieces I plucked out of my trash at random:

• ATTENTION: TIME SENSITIVE DOCUMENTS ENCLOSED
Your Input and Signature Needed
REGISTERED DOCUMENT #XXXX-XX-XXXX

• Your 2012 XXXX Membership Card Is Enclosed
Urgent Response Requested

• SECOND REQUEST (in red)
MEMBERSHIP RENEWAL NOTICE
IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUESTED

These are certainly urgent requests for action. But only the first one piques my interest, and only because it’s requesting my “input,” and I’m always happy to share my opinions. And gee whiz, it had a “Registered Document number” on it. Sure looks official and all. Sadly, it doesn’t offer me anything I really want, so into the trash it goes.

At the moment, I’m doing a direct mail campaign for a client. To maximize his budget, the mailings need to be relevant to his target audience. The letters will present them with an offer they can’t refuse—if they’re in the market for what he’s selling, and if the prospects’ dissatisfaction with other providers is as high as we think it is, they will be.

But I won’t simply say, “When you choose XYZ Company, you’ll get (unique benefit).” I will go beyond that and build my message around this idea:

“When you choose XYZ Company, you will get (something they really aren’t getting now and want badly: all the service they’re paying for). Our service tracking system calculates exactly how much service you are getting from our company every week. And if you don’t get every bit of service you are paying for, that week is FREE!”

There is an additional incentive to do it: When the prospect responds within a certain time limit, either by calling or by sending in an enclosed postage-paid card, and sets up an appointment, s/he will get a free demo of the service, and s/he will be able to see measurable results! I can’t reveal how (client confidentiality), but it is a doable offer.

There is no risk and no obligation involved. There is everything to gain. Why wouldn’t the prospect respond?

• First, we’re offering something the target audience is VERY interested in (getting the most for their budget, because most companies don’t give them all the service they pay for).
• Second, we’re doing something else no one else in the market is doing: backing it up with a measurable guarantee of performance.
• Third, we’re offering a FREE demo, which gives a representative a foot in the door.
• Fourth, we’re giving them a sense of urgency about responding, since the offer expires in a couple of weeks.

In addition, the letter and the postcard will have a code number that will let us track results. A 1% to 3% response rate is standard, but if the list is honed to include only the best prospects, it could be higher.

Finally, we won’t leave it there. We’ll send prospects two more direct mail letters, each one highlighting a real pain the prospect has that my client can relieve. After that, any prospects who haven’t responded yet will receive three brochures at staged intervals detailing the same three surefire (if we’ve found out they work in DM) pain-relief scenarios.

So the net of it is this: If you’re the creative putting together a direct mail campaign, don’t kill yourself trying to think up a fancy, possibly creative-award-winning headline and tricky copy for your direct mail letter. Keep it simple (not that it’s easy). Put your head together with your client’s and come up with a solid offer of something the prospect needs and wants, something relevant to his or her needs. Then state it simply and compellingly. And finally, plot out your campaign and keep with it. That’s all there is to it. Now, go and get relevant!

POSTSCRIPT:
A day or two after the first mailing of 50 letters, my client received a call and made an appointment, the first of many, we hope. Second letter is going out early next week. Common wisdom says a 1% to 2% response rate is good for direct mail. In this case, just one new customer could easily pay for the marketing effort! Successful campaigns don’t cost, they pay.

On the TV news, I heard a woman being interviewed about a crime. She said, “…then that gentleman shot him and ran away.” Or something like that. Hey, lady—a guy who shoots people is no gentleman, unless he’s a cop, in which case he’s a “police officer.”

What I’m getting at is the excessive niceness of using the word “gentleman” for any old bloke. Of course, long ago, a gentleman was a fellow with some property and some manners, a man who was, if not in the upper class, at least in the upper-middle class. Someone you would call “Mister” instead of “Hey, you!” But today, people use the term, “gentleman” to refer to anyone from a gangster to a king. But hold it, folks. The word has connotations and denotations you might not mean when you use it, to-wit:

• A chivalrous, courteous, or honorable man.
• A man of good social position, esp. one of wealth and leisure.

Not every old anybody you meet is a gentleman. So isn’t it okay to call a male human a “fellow,” a “man,” or a “guy,” depending on the context? For example, consider the following:

“That man at the entrance gate said we ought to park in Row R.” Generic male human.

“A fellow I know can get you a good deal on tires.” Implies some personal knowledge of the man.

“Who told you that?” “I dunno. Some guy at the bar.” Generic with a tinge of disrespect.

But “gentleman?” I wouldn’t apply it to a homeless guy living under a bridge. He may, in fact, behave in a gentlemanly manner (especially if he’s a former banker, investment broker or Humanities major). But still, I’d reserve the term for someone who is several cuts above a “guy.” Wouldn’t you?

I wonder if all this “gentleman” business is about the drive to eliminate “elitism,” that bugaboo of Yankee down-to-earthism. If every man, no matter how uneducated, crude or penniless, is a “gentleman,” then no one is really “elite.” If every 8th-grade dropout hanging on the corner talking trash is a “gentleman,” then where is the honor in being called “gentleman?”

On the other hand, it might be a well-intentioned attempt to honor every male citizen’s potential, or not to judge a man one doesn’t know. But now, let’s put the shoe on the other foot, in this case, a lady’s foot.

There are women, ladies, girls, gals, and other names I won’t mention which are generally used by guys (not gentlemen). A “woman” can be anyone from your Great-Aunt Suzy to a female wrestler to a jailbird. A “lady,” on the other hand, generally is the female counterpart to gentleman. “Girls” and “gals” can mean women of any age—to other women of the same age. But “girls” generally refers to females under the age of 18. “Gals” generally refers to women over 30, especially when they pal around together—as “gal-pals.”

As a woman of a certain age, I recall fondly the days when store clerks and waiters called me, “Miss.” The first time someone called me, “Ma’am,” I looked around to see who they were talking to. I had crossed the Rubicon from “Miss” to “Ma’am” without knowing it, and finding it out that way stunned me temporarily. I’ve gotten over it now. I don’t feel like a “Ma’am,” still a “Miss” on the inside. But my outside apparently has given me away. Not fair, I say, but alas, there’s nothing to be done about it, so I will adopt the motto of the alley cat, Mehitabel, in Don Marquis’ brilliant book, “Archy and Mehitabel.” “Toujour gai, I say, toujour gai!”

Here’s a note from a client whose Web articles I’ve been proofreading and editing for a couple of years—a nice gentleman out in California who sells large tracts of land in the western U.S.

Liz, I find your corrections amazing, very detailed, and so critical to me presenting an intelligent article. I like your side notes also as it makes me rethink any assumptions I might have written late at night. Thanks again for all your help!

It’s always nice to be appreciated.

Once, I worked for an ad agency that had a regional KFC organization as a client. We did all kinds of collateral for them, including window signs. The production manager, Wanda, put one that had just been printed in quantity (500 or so) up on the glass wall separating her office from the front lobby. As I was walking by it, I stopped in my tracks. It read:

Chicken and Bisuits
$5.99

Nobody had proofed the copy. There was so little of it, the production manager probably didn’t think it was necessary.

I asked her, “Wanda, what are ‘bisuits?’” She looked up and asked, “What?” I said, “Well, I wondered what a ‘bisuit’ is. ‘Cause they’re selling them at KFC for $5.99.” I pointed at the sign. It took a few seconds for the penny to drop, and then, Wanda gasped and nearly fainted. A very cost-conscious person (a skinflint, actually) she was, and now she realized the agency would have to eat the cost of re-printing 500 window posters, this time touting Chicken and “biscuits,” not “bisuits.”

Not proofreading can cost you money! Far more than hiring me to do it for you.

Hire a professional to make sure your print or Web text is okay before you publish it. Ads, brochures and Web articles need to be grammatically correct, easy to read, and properly punctuated. If they are, you’ll look professional. If not, well… it could mark you as very unprofessional, and even unintelligent. Is it worth it to hire a proofreader/editor? You be the judge.

If you’re gonna use slang terms like “gonna,” you gotta learn to spell them properly, or you could get yourself into a whole lotta trouble with the police.

Here’s a case in point, reported in today’s Kansas City Star. A student at Lanier Technical College (in Georgia) sent a text message he meant to say, “Gunna be at West Hall this afternoon,” but the auto-correct feature changed “Gunna” to “Gunman.” On top of that, the text message was sent to the wrong number.

Whoever received the messaged called the police, and panic ensued. A north Georgia high school and middle school were locked down yesterday for fear the “Gunman” might be at large in the area. But finally, the texter was located and let off the hook when the lawmen realized he wasn’t a Gunman, just a lousy speller and a sloppy texter.

These tragic spelling mishaps needn’t happen. Watch what the heck you’re texting, how you’re spelling words, and how your “auto-correct” is messing with them. And for heavens’ sake, get the phone number right. Technology—ain’t it great?

Here’s the first installment of a story some cowboy residing in my brain, name of Stoney Broke, wrote awhile back. It’s called “Colfax Mingo and the Demon Woman.” It’s rated PG-13 for language and occasional comical adult scenes. I hope you enjoy it. If so, watch for more installments to follow.

“Ask Sally Smart”
The Octavia Bee-Gazette
June 26, 1998

Dear Sally Smart,

I am a 46-year-old single man, good-looking, hard-working, physically fit and know how to treat a lady. However, it seems like every woman I am attracted to has some fatal flaw.

One gal had three giant brothers with body odor who thought no man was good enough for her, and they would gather real close around me and glare at me whenever I came over, until I finally gave up.

Another one would bawl like a baby every time we went out, because she was still all hung up on her drunken ex-husband who ran out on her six years before.

Yet another one was real mean, and she went and had my old dog, Charlie, put to sleep to get back at her last boyfriend, which made no sense whatsoever. I could go on, but you catch my drift.

Sally Smart, what am I doing wrong? I’ve asked my friends, but they’re just as confused as I am. So please answer soon, as I am just about at the end of my rope here, especially without old Charlie to talk to.

Sincerely,
Flummoxed

5:06 PM, and the Amazon Bar was waiting for Colfax Mingo.

At the moment, Colfax was attempting to raise a bubble or two off a sliver of Lava to scrub axle grease off his hands and studying his face in the mirror. Jowls, not too bad for a man of 46. Eyes, a striking shade of blue the ladies at the Amazon sometimes remarked on, especially when he wore his fancy royal blue dress-up shirt with the pearl buttons. Hair, sandy with a few strands of gray. Hairline, receding a bit, but you might just think he had a high forehead. Holding my own, he thought. Okay.

He grabbed the nail brush off the garage sink and had just begun working seriously on the black under-nail gunk when he heard the ding of the air bell. Damn, he thought. Don’t let it be garage work. Just five dollars regular, maybe, which Sonny could handle, and then it would be Miller time.

Sonny yelled at him, “Hey, Col! Here comes Sara Lee!”

Colfax looked out the garage door and saw Sara Lee Giddons’ big brown 1976 Chrysler New Yorker gliding up to the pumps. He remembered the geography of that car’s back seat very well. And of Sara Lee. Last year, they had come together like the two elements of a plastic explosive, with similar results.

The entire basis of their relationship had been Colfax’s obsession with Sara Lee’s rear end. He dreamed about that generous derriere, awake and asleep. And as he went about his daily business in a sort of buttocks-induced trance, practically anything could remind him of it. A Big Boy tomato. A ’56 Buick bumper. His own chin cleft when he was shaving. For months, he was stumbling all over the station, butt-struck and, he thought, in love.

He and Sara Lee craved each other like sweet chocolate. On her lunch breaks from the Silver Saddle Cafe, she would drive over to the station, where he’d have the garage door up, the “closed” sign already hanging in the window. She’d pull into the stall, he’d lower the door, and they’d get down to business in the New Yorker’s plush back seat.

She’d suck on Colfax’s earlobe and sigh into his ear, “Oh, Mr. Mingo. I think my rear end needs workin’ on. Or is it my front end? I just don’t know. But you can find out, can’t you, Mr. Mingo?”

“Let’s see about that rear end first,” he’d say, spreading his hands over her behind and massaging it deeply as he pulled her to him. She’d sigh, wrap her arms around his neck and kiss him hard enough to turn him inside out.

After completing a ten-point check of her rear end, he would turn his attention to Sara Lee’s front end for awhile, and soon the interior of the New Yorker would be festooned with clothing, like a big rock beside a swimming hole. Then Sara Lee would murmur, “Oh, Mr. Mingo, I think I need a new… drive shaft, don’t you?” Her coffee-black eyes would smolder, setting Colfax on fire, then Sara Lee would pull him down, and soon Colfax would find himself bouncing like a little boat on Sara Lee’s big swells.

Now, seeing her again, Colfax felt a residual flash in his loins. But it was all over between them, had been for months. And he’d had three girls since Sara Lee.

Over the years, Colfax had gathered a large body of evidence indicating that his pecker wasn’t the best judge of relationship material, but he still couldn’t figure out what to do about it. Sara Lee was a case in point. While the sex part had been stupendous, at those other times, quiet times, when they had sat on the cushy couch in front of Sara Lee’s big-screen TV watching “Austin City Limits” and sharing a bowl of microwave popcorn, Colfax had felt flat and empty.

Sara Lee, on the other hand, had seemed perfectly satisfied with their arrangement. And Colfax had gone along for awhile. But then she’d begun dropping the “m” word and wanting him to go along to Walmart and help her pick out kitchen curtains and small electric appliances. Colfax had begun making excuses. She’d sulked. He’d soothed. She’d screamed. He’d scrammed. There had never been a definitive ending to their affair. He’d just run out of stories, and Sara Lee had run out of steam. And now here she was.

Sonny ambled over to Colfax, his pimply brow furrowed and his thumbs hooked into his belt loops. “You want me to handle it, Col?”

“Naw, got to see her sometime,” Colfax mumbled. He squared his shoulders and headed toward the New Yorker.

Copyright 2012 Liz Craig. All rights reserved.

[To be continued]

From my earliest days on earth, my mother exposed me to great music. She sang and listened to classical music, and my dad had jazz records and played piano.

With my late mother’s birthday coming up on the 19th of this month, I am thinking more and more about music, and how grateful I am to have had the musical background to appreciate it. So here is a slide show about my lifelong affair with la musique. Hope you enjoy it.

Just on my nose, a little patch that some prescription cream is eating away.

For a year or two (three?), this little patch on the side of my nose had been flaking and peeling. When I went to a dermatologist for a mole check (required annually for people like me, with “that European skin”), I pointed it out, thinking she would give me some kind of cream to clear up what I thought probably was some kind of dermatitis. Nothing to fret about.

The dermatologist did give me a prescription for cream to put on it, but not to clear it up. This cream (Fluorouracil, in case you’re interested) has the ability to eat up cancer cells. I read the instructions and warnings, which is always frightening, and decided not to use it. I didn’t fully understand it. I thought it was supposed to identify cancer cells so you could have them surgically removed. And I really didn’t want to think about it. Besides, it was probably nothing, I thought. No need for such extreme measures. Then my other doctor explained it to me.

This cream is an *alternative* to surgery. It eats up the cells, and voila! no more cancer. He said it’s “pretty cool” that when it works, you can actually see the outline of the cancer under the skin. “Pretty cool?” Yech.

So anyway, I started putting a thin layer of it on the flaky patch twice a day, and before long, it turned an angry red. Then a thin scab appeared over it. I don’t know how long I’m supposed to keep applying the stuff. When I see the derm in a couple of weeks, I’ll find out.

The idea that I have skin cancer is unsettling, to say the least. Just the “C” word is troubling. Now that it’s become a reality with me, I remember a couple of bad burns when I was a child from spending too much time at the pool. That can up the odds you’ll have cancer at some point. But who ever heard of sunblock back then? Girls were lying by the pool for hours, applying baby oil and mercurochrome to get that fabulous-looking bronze. BTW, did you know mercurochrome is a poison? Yep. I recently read a book on poisons. OK, so my reading tastes are weird.

I have several kinds of sunblock, including in my facial moisturizer (though it’s only SP15, which is practically useless, they say). The overexposure I had long ago still will make itself known, it seems. But it’s good to use sunblock now, so exposure doesn’t cause any more troubling moles or flaky spots.

If you have “that European skin” (That is, if your forbears came from France, Germany and Czechoslovakia, as mine did), go for a mole check every year or two, whether you think you need it or not. And if you see a mole or a flaky place that looks funny, get to the derm sooner. It’s better to know, as difficult as it is.

God, the terrors of aging.