Brilliant Thoughts by Ashleigh Brilliant Born London, 1933. Mother Canadian. Father a British civil servant. World War II childhood spent mostly in Toronto and Washington, D.C. Berkeley PhD. in American History, 1964. Living in Santa Barbara with wife Dorothy since 1973. No children. Best-known for his illustrated epigrams, called “Pot-Shots”, now a series of 10,000. Email ashleigh@west.net or visit www.ashleighbrilliant.com
Deep Skin
H
ave you ever taken your car in to the shop for some presumably minor problem, only to be told, after a thorough inspection, that they’ve discovered several much more serious things that need work? That’s the same sort of thing which keeps happening to me whenever I take my body to a doctor – particularly a dermatologist. The skin, we’re told, is the body’s largest organ. It certainly covers the largest territory – and every square millimeter of it is subject to a variety of complaints. This makes it an extremely fertile field for skin doctors, and the older we get, the more skin problems we’re likely to have. I would advise any young person thinking of a career in medicine to consider specializing in dermatology. Every individual they see walking around is a potential goldmine. Taking a random group of problems from an alphabetical list (and selecting only the least disagreeable), just think how many of us are at some time afflicted with boils, bunions, blisters, bites, blackheads, bruises, bumps, and burns. It’s enough to make you want to turn to some more pleasant aspect of this subject – which I shall now attempt to do. Consider how important a role our skin plays in love-making. And we need not plunge too far into the process to get the general idea. Why did so many of us find so much meaning in The Beatles’s caterwauling of “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”? Why do we respond so empathetically to the idea of dancing “Cheek to Cheek”? How can one account for the great success of a soap promising “The Skin You Love to Touch”? After babyhood, so little of our flesh usually comes into direct contact with that of others that when it does, we have to be careful (especially nowadays, when allegations of “unwanted touching” are so frequently bandied about). True, we still accept the pat on the shoulder as a form of congratulation or encouragement. And even the hug is widely tolerated. But both of these symbolic gestures generally take place through protective layers of clothing. Indeed, the only form of direct skin-upon-skin tactile contact still generally accepted in our culture is the handshake. This ancient symbolic act, which was originally a means of demonstrating that you were not 8 – 15 December 2016
carrying a weapon, may however itself be on the way out – not for reasons of fashion or etiquette, but from concerns about sanitation and hygiene. Actually, it’s surprising that such a custom has lasted so long, in a society which now spends millions upon “anti-bacterial” products, and where many people consider a seat in a public toilet hazardous, unless a paper seat-cover is also provided. These popular obsessions are even more remarkable, when you realize that most doors used by the public are still hand-operated – and that money, in the form of coins and bills, still passes freely from hand to hand. (Obviously what’s required here is some new form of “money-laundering.”) And what about your newspaper – who knows how many germ-ridden locales such an object may have been in before it lands on your breakfast table? And then there’s the mail, and all the hygienically unsafe hands it may have passed through! But let’s get back to something more pleasant. Cole Porter wrote two songs that might have been dedicated to his dermatologist. In one he protested that “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” In another, there’s a similar lament:
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“Night and day, under the hide of me, There’s an ooh such a hungry yearning burning inside of me.” Poor Mr. Porter! If he’d sung instead about the teeth, there would have been no hide to get under, because, as everybody knows, teeth have no skin. Which makes you think that the expression about surviving “by the skin of our teeth” must have been meant as a joke. If so, you may be surprised to know that it’s a joke that can be traced all the way back to that notoriously unfunny document, the Bible, and its Book of Job (19:20). Of course, animals also have skin, which we use in a variety of ways, though few of them are in any way beneficial to the animal, unless that creature is fortunate enough to have the kind of fur that we like to stroke. But let me caution you against trying to verify the expression that “there’s more than one way to skin a cat.” According to the best cat-skinning authorities, this is highly questionable. •MJ
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