Day's. Best. News. (really)

[Professor Scroggins, preparing to begin his lecture]

The scab dropped off today. Which means I don't have skin cancer. Probably.

No, seriously – this is the sort of thing I obsess about. As I am – let's say – follically challenged, the tippy-top of my head is a particularly sensitive and vulnerable region. At some point this Spring I dinged myself hard on something (probably a bookshelf), and took ages for the little wound to scab over satisfactorily. Didn't help that I tend to rub the top of my head absently while reading, or that I prematurely de-scabbed myself several times thru overenthusiastic post-shower towelling.

But by May, I was beginning to worry that this thing was never going away, googling "scabs that won't go away" and "scalp melanoma" & other dire things. Didn't help that on a flight back from Tennessee a bit less than two weeks ago I whacked myself mightily on the overhead baggage compartment when standing up to deplane, so mightily that I found myself pressing a bloody napkin to my pate as I hauled down my suitcase.

Skin cancer is of course an occupational hazard in South Florida, particularly for us less well-furred types. One bald colleague went insouciantly about his business quite hatless for the first decade I was here, only to abruptly get the baseball cap religion one summer, I suspect after a scary visit to the dermatologist. Me, I'm not the baseball cap type, but I have taken to piratical bandanas, quaint middle- and far-eastern embroidered caps, and an obligatory spray of sunscreen on my head before venturing out. (At our last visit to Orlando & Universal's Harry Potter wonderland, the only thing that restrained me from buying a Dumbledore tassled cap was my worry that it was just a trifle too tight. Otherwise, I'd wear it in a minute.)

But today, just as I was gingerly fingering the thing & contemplating an appointment with the dermatologist, I realized that the scab had actually come off in my fingers, leaving nothing behind but healthy pinkish newly-healed skin. This has got to be a good omen of some sort.