Finding the Writing Moment in My Alien Boob

This would be porn in an alternate universe. Here it is just weird and unnerving.

Hello from the Dogpatch,

People, I am sooooo busy at work! You know the feeling you writers, bloggers, professionals of all sorts. So you’ll understand how my extreme busy-ness by necessity translated into me lying in bed this morning using my Android phone camera to take a picture of my boob to see how it’s holding up when I’m, well, lying flat on my back unmoving and definitely not editing that magazine article.

I’m getting ready to turn 50 on Halloween, so maybe this year I’m a little more prone to take stock, check out the status of various body parts. Not that I expect to look like a 20-year-old supermodel, but I was expecting something to actually show up on the camera besides negative space.

To clarify, the lower right quadrant of this image is my boob. The greenish part upper left is, I think, the shadow off my green wall. I have no idea about the black stripe with twinkling lights in the middle. I guess it’s the shadow of the spaceship.

Because my boob clearly has turned into an alien. It masquerades as fairly normal to the naked eye, but can’t hide its true nature from the camera.

I took 5 more pictures to double check, and they all turned out to be a version of this. I use this little camera phone all the time, and it works fine. I swear. Except, apparently, on my boob.

I walked around all day thinking there must be a writing moment here. That I should be inspired to draft my middle-aged new beginnings finding myself and all things are possible memoir. Nope.

Or that this would somehow inform the characters in a short story I’m sussing out. Like how characters have ideals of themselves that aren’t met or perceptions of themselves that are off the mark. But I’m not a sci-fi writer and don’t have a character who is morphing into an alien starting from the right boob working leftward.

I wondered if I would rise above all self-image concerns and whip out some witty little essay on how 50 is the new 60. Nada there, too.

All I’m left with is a picture that makes me a little nervous and a slightly queasy feeling when I unhook my bra.

XO Laurel Leigh