The older I get, the more clueless I seem to be about how I might look in public.
That’s how the clueless me came to be slogging through my neighborhood Tuesday morning with a camouflaged jacket draped over my head.
There was a reason for that. Two reasons, actually: squamous cell and basal cell.
Those two unfriendly actors on the stage of demented cell division are members of the carcinoma family. They took advantage of my half-century or so of cluelessly (there’s that word again) unprotected time in the sun. They also took most of my left (squamous) and right (basal) eyebrows.
And while I’ve had plenty of other pre-cancers and worrisome what-the-heck-is-thats frozen or cut off, the two more complicated Mohs surgeries — if you’ve had it, you know the drill — for the carcinomas are what got me really serious about covering my skin, especially my face and head.
But clueless sometimes meets serious in my world. So when I left the house at about 9:30 a.m. for a brisk walk around the neighborhood and up the hill to Flormann Street, I was wearing only the seedy-looking stocking cap I had on when I took my springer spaniel for a shady forest stroll earlier.
I wanted more of a workout. And Rosie’s arthritis won’t allow her to keep pace. So I was alone with my thoughts and my strides making good time up the hill when I realized how hot the sun was. On my skin. The skin of my face. Which, you know, has had some issues with that sun.
Clueless in a stocking cap
In haste, I’d smeared a bit of sunscreen across prominent features of my mug on the way out the door. But when that full, early March sun started beating down on me and the temperature was most of the way to its predicted 55, I didn’t feel adequately protected.
I pulled the stocking cap I’d worn in the woods down over my eyebrows to protect the forehead and those two past-cancer-removal areas. But the rest of my face felt like it was sizzling, even in early March.
So I took off the camo jacket I was wearing — part of what my wife unkindly calls my “Old Man’s Posse Comitatus Outfit — and draped it over my head for protection as I walked. In fact, I had most of the OMPC Outfit on, as it turned out.
I added the old, black, wrap-around sunglasses that used to capture the eye of a waitress at a local cafe. “Oh, those sunglasses,” she’d say when I came in. “But I bet my dad would like them, too.”
That outfit comes into play in a bit.
But first, an important safety tip. Walking on busy streets with a jacket of any style draped over your head is not public-safety official, especially if you’re walking near traffic. I made it a point to stay on sidewalks and up on the curb for the short stretch of street that didn’t have one.
And I lifted my camo veil from time to time to check on the world.
Based on the limited glimpse I got from the sidewalk by looking out, sort of, from under an armpit of the dangling jacket, motorists passing by on the street seemed to be noticing me, in some cases with looks of concern.
Considering a good set of lungs, and COVID pneumonia
I wasn’t concerned. I was striding out, feeling good, celebrating the fact that I had one COVID vaccination in the arm and another scheduled in a couple of weeks. It’s been a long, lonesome, worrisome COVID year, and a lot worse than that for many, but there are better times coming.
And my old almost-70-year-old lungs were working really well.
Appreciating my lung capacity got me thinking about a friend who is home with COVID-19 pneumonia. He was pretty sick. Not hospital-stay sick. But ER-visit sick and lung-X-ray sick and CT-scan sick.
This is serious stuff. He took it seriously, wearing masks and being careful about his contacts. But his workplace and the attitudes there left him vulnerable. And the virus found him, as it has found so many others.
My friend is on meds and on the mend at home, with regular contact with his doctors. But he’s still off work and taking things really, really easy. And I haven’t seen him since before he got the virus.
I have been checking by text and dropping off some of Mary’s soup and, sometimes, homemade Irish soda bread (Yes, it’s amazing) from time to time, just leaving it inside the door.
And as I walked, I sent a text to check on him. No response.
As I walked farther, I decided to stroll past his house. As I headed in that direction, I was going away from the morning sun. So I took the camo jacket off my head and carried it.
When I got to my friend’s house, I sent another text that read: “Passing your house.” Still no response.
I stopped for a while on the sidewalk in front of his house, looking up, looking down at my cell phone, looking up some more.
Still no response. Could be sleeping, I figured. He does a lot of that since COVID hit him.
No, I’m not a stalker, just clueless about my attire
So I started to walk away on the sidewalk, noticing as I did that a woman was walking toward me on that same sidewalk a block or so away. She noticed me and seemed, well, interested, if not quite concerned. Not yet, anyway.
Remembering my odd behavior and my Old Man’s Posse Comitatus look, I decided to cross the street. Since COVID, I like to give myself and those I meet plenty of space on narrow sidewalks. I also thought, given my stealthy, mid-morning behavior and my attire, maybe the woman would appreciate the space even more.
But after a few steps, I got a text from my friend, so I stopped to read it, turned, stared up at the house, and started to walk back toward it.
My friend’s text said he was doing quite a bit better. And I was tapping out a response on the little keyboard in my hand as the woman passed me a few feet away. Not nervously, but not entirely comfortably, either.
“I’m not a stalker, really,” I said, as she nodded uneasy affirmation and gave me a not-100-percent-convinced smile. “I’ve got a sick friend and I’m trying to get him to come to the window.”
She continued her walk, briskly. I continued my texting, with the camo jacket rolled up sleeping-bag style under my arm. And got my pal to come to the window, and I was happy to see him smiling.
And, looking back, I’m sure glad I took the jacket off my head when I did. It might have saved that woman the trouble of making a call to the police.