My skin has so many moles, I nearly qualify as my own animal print. I’m waiting on a World Wildlife Federation panel to approve my application. By next fall, you could be seeing Gretchen-print hot pants, bustiers, and gladiator shoes on D-list celebrities and Gwyneth Paltrow.

Because I am liberally sprinkled with moles in all shapes, sizes, and colors, I recently visited a dermatologist to make sure none of them look threatening or even mildly irked. My skin is damaged from the sun-soaked summers of my teen years, when I was too cool for Coppertone. Between biology and stupidity, I am a ticking time bomb.

After taking my medical history, the doctor left me to put on the paper gown for the examination. I waited for several minutes, which was enough time to gawk at the posters of melanomas, squamous cell carcinomas, and basal cell carcinomas. Nothing on my body looked like the pictures. I felt myself relaxing, certain none of the moles I sport come near the devastation in the photos. A soft knock brought the doctor and an assistant back into the room.

I was a bit surprised it was going to take two people to peer at my spots, until I realized the assistant was going to draw the location of my moles on a body map for my permanent record.

The doctor picked up a comb. She began parting my hair, meticulously. It would be a minor miracle for me to develop skin cancer on my scalp, since my hair is Sasquatch-thick. She clucked and told me something embarrassing about using the wrong shampoo. No moles.

She moved down my head, looking at my face through a visor/goggle apparatus that made me feel like a microbe on a slide. Nobody has ever stared that intently into my face before, even my mother when newborn me was placed in her arms.

When the doctor looked in my mouth for moles, I tried to remember if I ever fell asleep while sunbathing on my back. Slack-jawed and drooling, UVA and UVB rays may have mistaken my tongue for a red carpet welcome. She snapped her little flashlight off and moved down, down, down.

The cozier corners, the nooks, the crannies – all are potential locations for skin cancer. I knew she wasn’t trying to make me uncomfortable with her goggles and gloves and cryptic instructions to the assistant with the clipboard. But I was uncomfortable. Skin cancer can occur anywhere on the body.

I guess I was expecting to show her the weird brownish black spot on the back of my right arm. I thought I’d tell her the tale of the black beauty on the center of my back. If I were Cindy Crawford and my back was my face, cha-ching.

The exam didn’t go the way I envisioned. I am glad I had it done, though. It is an important exam to have, and I fully encourage everyone reading to have their moles looked at by a dermatologist. Know what to expect, unlike me who went in thinking I was going to chit-chat about my markings, not feel like a big game animal who had been tranquilized and tagged for study. I also encourage everyone to use suncreen, avoid tanning beds, and be vigilant regarding unnecessary sun exposure.

No golden glow is worth watching a clipboard-wielding assistant draw a mole there.