Trump's Head is a Skin Tag

While all the world is pondering Donald J. Trump, I ponder the skin tag. Unlike Mr. Trump, skin tags are benign. Like Mr. Trump, they're fascinating. Skin tags can be slightly wrinkled and irregular, flesh-colored or light brown, and hang from the skin by a small stalk. Some may be as large as a big grape. In very rare cases, they can take on a strange orange hue and protrude upward from the necks of bankrupt casino moguls. As such, they resemble grotesque jack-o-lanterns. Removal of typical skin tags usually involves freezing or scissors. Removal of the very rare kind requires a guillotine.

My skin tag pondering is no accident. Some years ago two of them emerged in my left armpit and have been passengers in semi-hibernation ever since. They are meek and unassuming like never-used spices at the back of a kitchen cabinet. There they sit, but really, who cares. They are like fraternal twins, dangling from threads like punching bags, just hanging out without any agenda.

I often spy my boys when showering or changing my shirt. It had been a tender moment when my wife first happened upon them. Her discovery was, shall we say, a real mood changer. "Oh, my God!" she gasped. "What are those! You have leprosy!"

Note all the ridicule Trump has endured over the massive noodle nest on top of his head.  The guy looks like a greaser from Grease but without the grease. No matter, The Donald stands his ground and refuses to hack away at that horrendous hedge. In the same vein, you would think that that repulsive and intimate unveiling of my hideous growths might cause me to scramble for the scissors.

But my little guys have grown on me. Ashamed to admit it, but I named them: Pierre and Fatso. The littler one, the tubular dude with a crimson glow, the one with that certain "je ne sais qua"? That's Pierre. The sack-like and yellow fellow who looks like a cross between a whoopee cushion and the oozing thing in the horror film, The Blob? That's Fatso.

You don't just anesthetize your little buddies and then snip them away like so many toenails. Besides, my wife has evolved from revulsion to acceptance to downright hospitality. She might say, "C'mon, honey, give me a peak of Pierre and Fatso."

At my father's memorial service, the first line in my eulogy was, "I am told I have nice hair." I went on to talk about Dad's qualities (including his nice hair) that I inherited or have at least tried to emulate. In his last years, as weakness and dementia took over, he lived with us and I was his caregiver. I fed him, clothed him, and every few days, gave him a shower. He would step shivering and naked into the stall, and holding onto a handicap bar for support, the expanse of his back faced me dead on.

And what a spectacular sight that was. A hundred skin tags, moles, blemishes, pimples, warts, and other mysterious spots freckled his skin from neck to waist. It was like gazing up at the starry skies on a cloudless and moonless night. My sister, when first beholding Dad's back, said she was tempted to draw lines between the spots to create a map of well-known constellations. Thus far I haven't broken out in full blown skin anomalies, but I could have as easily begun my eulogy with, "I have skin tags, just like my dad."

Feel free to destroy or co-habitate with your own skin growths as you see fit. But let me be very clear: I do not, as yet, condone the use of a guillotine to eliminate Donald Trump's orange protrusion. I leave that to the left-leaning mob and the United States Senate. A massive American minority sees this bizarre growth as something regal and benign, like a fat French king living in Versailles. Time will tell if his name should be Pierre or something horribly misdiagnosed in need of a scalpel.