"Why do you have a hole in your face?"

"Why do you have a hole in your face?" Emma would sometimes ask me. She would sit on my lap and poke at my cheek, a quizzical expression on her face.

"I don't know. It's just always been there I think." I would say.

"It looks really funny," she'd reply.

A while ago I was talking to my dad and he stopped the conversation to say, "Whoa, you're a pit viper just like me!" pointing to a hole in his face in the exact same spot. I guess the medical term is "Dilated Pore" but what it really looks like is a gaping hole. I think he meant to say something more like, "You've got a viper pit just like I do!"

Hole. Viper pit. Dilated pore. Genetic blemish. Sunscreen storage for later applications.

Call it what you will. It was annoying.

Today, I ventured beyond my blue-collar range into a land of Range Rovers and raspberry-infused water. I cast aside the shackles of lower-middle class to join the ranks of the rich and micro-dermibrased. I went to... the dermatologist.

I didn't really get microdermibrasion. I don't actually know how that works. I picture tiny surgeons driving Micro-Machines around your face with very small cheese graters attached to their bumpers like snow plows.

My dad said a dermatologist could do a punch biopsy to cut out the area around the hole and just throw in a few stitches to close it all up. Sounded pretty easy.

So, today I did. I sat in the waiting room (where they offered the standard magazines but also a surprising amount of C.S. Lewis) and read BusinessWeek in hopes of fitting in more.

The whole process was quick and fairly painless. It is strange to get a numbing shot so close to your eye but I would do it a thousand times before getting numbed for a vasectomy again!

While I was in the shop, I decided to get a mole on my back removed. Piece of cake. They were done before I realized they had started.

While the doctor was stitching my face she said, "We have to make sure we leave the smallest scar possible and avoid bruising. People may not be pretty when they come in here but they're pretty when they leave!"

That comment worried me a little as I began wondering if I was pretty enough for them to let me out, or if they caged the ugly people in back until nightfall.