December 17, 2012 - Written by: Yazmin Joy

A Spot of Bother

‘What do you think it is?’ Alex* whinnied as I leant forward, peering over, eyes squinting. ‘Did you notice it when I came in?’ she asked. ‘Nooooo,’ I said, but the shrill pitch of my voice was a clear indication that I was blatantly lying. I mean her forehead was pretty bulbous and had gone a rather disconcerting rouge. ‘Ouch!’ she yelped as I prodded the lump with my finger. ‘Oh sorry…’ I said as I conducted my examination with the discernment and pragmatism of a real life physician. ‘But there’s no head, so it can’t be a spot…’ This was true. I rubbed my chin. ‘Maybe it’s a no-header spot – you know – one of the under-the-skin-buggers?’ But the swelling was taking up most of her forehead. I slumped back down on my arm chair, clearer bemused by the situation at hand.

By this point, we were getting a few odd looks in the room. A busy cafe was maybe not the most appropriate setting to be examining the lump on my friend’s head. ‘What the hell could it be?’ Alex was sounding more and more distressed. ‘I mean what if it’s an allergic reaction? It really hurts you know.’

We sat in the cafe for over an hour considering a variety of colourful and exotic reasons for her enormous forehead.

‘I know!’ Alex announced. ‘Straight after this I am going into town to search for a remedy. I’ll go straight to the pharmacy!’

When we parted ways Alex’s anxiety had rubbed off on me and I spent a considerable time after our meeting imagining she had one of those freak conditions you see on Channel 4 documentaries: ‘Girl finds the under-developed bone structure of her unborn twin’s fetus in her head’. I could see myself in the program being interviewed in one of those rooms that the tv crew make out to look like a real living room: ‘she always said the parent trap was her favourite childhood film… I mean, a twin?? Imagine the irony…’ But maybe my imagination was getting ahead of me.

I decided I needed some retail therapy myself.

During the day I received a number of texts from Alex. ‘The beautician was baffled. The pharmacist was perplexed and the chemist was confused!’ She was even beginning to worry it was some kind of rare toxic brain condition. I bought myself some sparkly nail varnish to cheer myself up.

After a long day of searching for a cure (or at least some kind of reasonable diagnosis) Alex came back to her university room and lay down on the bed, Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata gently lulling her further and further into a state of melancholy. ‘What if this was the end of it all?’ Alex thought, a solitary tear dramatically running down her face and onto her pillow.

Then she heard a knock at the door. She sat up and BAMMMM!! Smacked her head on the slanting wall above her bed. Oh yeah!!!

At about twenty minutes past ten that night I received a text: ‘Don’t worry about the lump. It’s not cancer. Just remembered I banged my head this morning. Ha typical me. xxx’ And that was that.