November 21, 2006
Skin
All the participants in the Plasticization Exhibit I visited last summer are life-size volunteers without their skin. Nobody said how they volunteered or how willing they might have been. I hope they just volunteered through the medium of their last wills and testaments to be done with as the plasticizers chose and not some other way. At any rate, it’s quite a sight wandering through the exhibit and realizing just how much our skins cover up and contain. Watching the watchers had its moments, too.
One volunteer guy is shown walking along in his sub-wherewithall carrying his skin over his arm like a topcoat which, of course, it is, sort of. Another is going through the motion of serving a tennis ball complete with racket in hand. Still another is riding a skinless horse.
Some churchers have protested the morality of this sort of thing as taking away from our dignity as human beings. Maybe so, but the way we allow so many to go hungry and sick and spend all our money on killing people seems a lot more indignant to me.
Our skins are the largest organ in our bodies. They’re said to be “in” and not “on” I suspect because our bodies start on the surface of the skin, the epidermis, and not underneath where what’s called the dermis and the subcutaneous fat, the part that makes us lumpy.
Skins are very efficient. They not only keep all our working parts from getting all out of order and spilling out in disarray, they help regulate body temperature, and perhaps best of all, they provide us with a sense of touch. I just wish mine wouldn’t stretch so much. I don’t especially need a bod like Arnold Schwarzenegger. I’d frankly settle for looking maybe more like Robert Redford.
All this is suddenly on my mind because I had an appointment with the dermatologist today to check out some recent intruders. He was mighty thorough and, I’m pleased to say, said I had pretty good skin for a person my age. I don’t know why people always seem to have to add that qualifier — for eyes and teeth and even cornet playing. Whatever, I’m glad I’ve got a skin that’s still reasonably intact and holding the rest of me together. Having seen those plasticized folk is enough for now.