Editor’s Note: Re-posting in honor of a friend of a friend who returned to work this morning from the July 4th holiday with a hickey on her neck.  God Bless America!

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When people say, “You’ll laugh at this one day!” they’re usually right…

There are many things I viewed as utter tragedies at the time of occurrence, that I eventually came to find  humorous down the road.

Way down the road.

But, it’s hard to laugh when you are still cringing.  Last Sunday morning, while my husband and I were sipping our coffee, he looked at me quizzically –

“What’s that on your neck?”

“What?”  I replied, mildly concerned.

 “Turn your head to the side”

 “What??”  (growing increasingly concerned.)

“Whoa…My bad”

“What???”  (now full-on frantic.)

I got up, looked in the mirror, tilted my head to the right and there sat a mark on my neck, front and center, roughly the size and shape of Wisconsin.

I began to freak out, in exactly the way that ALL 52 YEAR OLD WOMEN DO WHEN THEY FIND A SATURDAY-NIGHT HICKEY ON THEIR SUNDAY-MORNING NECK.

“Oh my GOD!!’ I screamed.
“I can’t go to church or anywhere else today!!


OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD, OH MY GGGGODDDD”

Now, over the course of this 34+ year relationship, suffice it to say this isn’t the first crisis my Hunk-of-Burning-Love and I have faced together. (In fact, we started dating at 18, so it’s actually not even the first hickey we’ve faced-down together) Through the years, this man has come to pride himself on always knowing just what to say to calm me down in any given situation:

“Relax,” quips The Wife-Whisperer, “At your age, no one will know its a hickey, they’ll just think it’s a liver spot!!”

Frightened by my reaction to that remark, he tried a different tack… “You need to get up and start your day.  Moving around will get the blood flowing and it’ll fade.”

(You’ve got to hand it to the guy, he’s quick on his feet.  He obviously made that up on the spot, because it’s absolutely not true…)

“I’m soooo embarrassed,” I wailed, totally tapping into my inner Drama Queen

“Why are you making such a big deal ? Anyone who notices it will just know we are still in love…” said The-Man-Whose-Love-Life-Is-On-The-Line.

“You literally suck!” I replied

Aware that, in addition to being what my mother would refer to as a “Hussy,” I had also taken the Lord’s name in vain 4 times and it wasn’t even 8 am.

Thus, I resigned myself to the fact that church attendance was now even more mandatory to my unlikely salvation situation. When it was time to get ready, I swept all of my hair into a massively thick curly/frizzy side-ponytail that more or less obscured the mark.

“Hey- I love your hair that way!” exclaimed Lover Boy, quite a bit overzealously.

We arrived for church late and left early, which didn’t help my salvation cause, but spared me a little humiliation “fellowshipping” with the non-hickey crowd.

Afterwards, before we headed home, we decided to run a couple of errands. We were walking into the grocery store, when, predictably, we ran into one of my close friends. We hugged one another in greeting and, as she hugged me, she whispered discreetly in my ear,

“I don’t know if you know this or not, but you have a huge hickey on your neck”.

“I am more than aware,” I assure her.

Its been 4 days now, and I’ve spent a ton of time and money caking pounds of makeup on my neck, in a desperate and futile effort to preserve my tarnished reputation – which is rather pointless, because what’s left of my reputation, will be ruined the minute I publish this post.