Well, it seems I’ve entered the skin-repair phase of my health care journey. It’s time to pay for my youthful carelessness, although back in the day I was just “getting some sunshine.”
My annual visit to the dermatologist indicates I have a couple of bad spots that need to come off, one on the notch at the top of my sternum and the other on top of my left ear. I’m thinking boxer Mike Tyson could take care of my ear in one quick chomp like he did to Evander Holyfield. Anyone remember that?
I know age and genetics have brought this down on me, but it’s also a result of lifestyle and what we didn’t know back in my childhood. It was a time when kids were encouraged to go outside and play all day “but be home in time for supper.” It was before sunscreen when we worked on our tans with suntan lotions that didn’t have SPF numbers but instead promised a “healthy glow” with colors ranging from copper to gold to bronze. Some people just rubbed on baby oil and roasted in the sun like a chicken on a rotisserie.
And it wasn’t just a summertime thing. I remember friends going skiing during the Christmas holidays and coming back to school with lift tickets clipped to their jacket zippers and sun and wind burns on their faces, except around their eyes where they wore goggles. They sort of looked like racoons.
My brother and I had fair skin and blue eyes so we were more likely to burn than tan, although burn upon burn upon burn would create a cumulative tan of sorts. I remember one day my brother was roasting on a towel in the backyard and I climbed the fence and surprised him with a water balloon in the chest. I can still hear him shouting at me as I ran away down the alley. But there’s nothing more boring than laying out in the sun, so I mostly got over-exposed from playing outdoors without any protection, and now it’s time to pay the piper.
Every generation will have to pay for something they did or something that happened to them earlier in life. For some it will be simply because they didn’t know what they didn’t know. My generation didn’t know the cute little girl with the dog tugging on her swimsuit in the Coppertone ads would be paying for that deep tan with trips to the dermatologist. The same could be said now for lifelong consumers of tobacco and processed foods, both marketed early on as good for us.
There have always been personal costs for sedentary lifestyles, ignoring mental health and neglecting sleep, but the negative impacts are getting more attention now. Everyone is paying for the normalization of selfishness, greed, apathy, violence, disrespect, gossip and bad politics.
We don’t yet know the long-term costs of smartphones and tablets, nonstop social media and streaming, consuming unchecked and unverified news, pay-for-play college athletics and pretty much any use of AI that deceives or takes the place of human creativity. Scientists in fields such as psychology, sociology and even theology are starting to sound the alarm. Somewhere down the line — in five years, 10, 25, 50 — there will be a price to pay. There always is.
One prediction I have for the generations behind me is they will need to be fitted for hearing aids at an earlier age than has been the norm. It will be the cost of loud music and noise at concerts, sporting events, restaurants and, dare I say, some churches. If I had money to invest, I’d put it into tech companies working on next-generation audiological devices.
Meanwhile, if you see me with a bandage on top of my ear, it’s not because I boxed a round with Mike Tyson. It’s because a trusted dermatologist is making sure I’ll still have enough of an ear to support a hearing aid someday. Because yes, I’ve indulged in noisy entertainment too.