After eight months of thinking I should get this pesky spot on my face checked out, one morning I woke up and started to panic. I might have been watching too much Discovery Channel, but I went from thinking, I’ll get around to it one of these days, to calling a dermatologist as if my chin had just melted off.

“Is this an emergency?” the receptionist wanted to know.

It may have been my tone. I took a breath and told her my symptoms.

“I have an opening a week from Thursday,” she said. It always soothes me when the person answering the phone hears my story and still sounds as bored as she did when she first said, “Dr. Goldfarb’s office. May I help you?”

This spot near my temple — whatever it’s called — is all my fault. It’s not the kind of disease that lands on innocent people’s pancreases while they sleep, or attaches itself to one of your lymph nodes even though you’ve eaten kale and gotten eight hours of sleep your entire life.

If my skin is about to crust over and slide off my face, I did it to myself, starting when I was 16 and began spending my summers in the sun, lathering on the baby oil and cursing the clouds. Memorial Day would begin with a marathon bake that served as a base coat. My goal was to overcome the Anglo Saxon genes in my DNA and stay the color of medium toast through September. Tanning was my only sport, and though I didn’t have a prayer of beating out Greek or Italian girls, I gave it my all.

1966 had been good to me. The extra room in my bra was finally being called into action. Almost overnight, it seemed, my bony hips were gone, and fat deposits became my friend in a way they would never be my friend again. My mother gave me permission to use Summer Blonde on my mousy brown hair. It morphed into the shiny blonde of my childhood, hair I only knew in pictures. And — as if that weren’t enough — I lived in a place where Jones Beach, ten miles of pristine sand on the Atlantic Ocean, was all mine for a 35¢ bus ride. Now the only thing left to do was wreck my skin forever.

Dr. Goldfarb, whose waiting room is full of mauve chairs and concerned folks in their 80s, walks into the exam room as he is reading my chart.

“So what brings you in today?”

I explain the situation as if nothing about it is my fault, and — oddly — I think I can fool him. The first question he asks is about sun exposure when I was young. Apparently, he’s on to me.

“How long has this spot been there?”

I cut the time by two-thirds so neither of us will become alarmed. He stares at it. He pokes it with an instrument. He picks up my newly created file and jots something down.

“We can take care of that for you,” he says in my direction over his reading glasses.

Before he fixes me, though, he lectures me about the error of my youthful ways. And I’m thinking that unless he’s storing his time machine in the next room, this is rather a waste of our ten minutes together and a copay.

He says, “basal cell blah blah blah” and “dermis something something,” but since all immediate danger has passed, I’m now noticing that he doesn’t have a single wrinkle on his forehead. This probably comes in handy when you don’t want to look horrified in front of a patient whose skin might be full of pustules. His cuffs are monogrammed. And he has $1,000 worth of pens in his pocket. There is money in old people’s skin, and it looks like I’ve arrived squarely in the middle of his demographic although I don’t feel at all ready to be here.

I wince as he freezes the dry spot on my face. We have a discussion about SPF products. I make promises. He turns to write a prescription for salve, and I know he’ll soon be on his way to another post-menopausal former bikini-beauty who is waiting in the next room.

But he turns, and — for the first time — looks directly into my eyes.

“Do you have someone who regularly sees your back?”

Such a simple question. But it takes me by surprise.

“No.”

“Would you like me to take a quick look?”

“Sure!” I say, reaching for an upbeat tone. I’m trying to sound like I’m not embarrassed that I have no one to look at my back.

Then I pray that there’s not some painless carcinoma galloping across my shoulder blade that’s about to be discovered. If I had a person who slept with me every night, he’d have had ample opportunity to view me from all angles and — if necessary — shout out, “Holy mother of God, what is that purple thing hanging off your back?” But that hasn’t happened, so I don’t know if there is anything purple there or not, honestly.

I yank my sweater up in the back so he can get a full view. The sweater rides up in the front, too, and gentle rolls spread out in front of me even though I’m sucking in and holding my breath. I can’t remember if my bra is the black lacy one, which would seem so . . . unnecessary, and I have no idea why I bought it anyway.

“Looks fine,” he says, and reaches for one of his Mont Blanc pens to write (probably) “Back looks fine.”

I am relieved about my back, but I feel a little sorry for the rest of my skin because I know where it’s probably heading. I’m slated for veiny hands and more wrinkles and liver spots and probably a few more spins around the Ferris wheel with Dr. Goldfarb.

Would I have rather stayed in the shade? Ha.

Oh, Jones Beach, you were so worth it.