Mary Ellen Nanney, age 12, of Gastonia, N.C., or her question:
How do freckles from?
Some people are decorated with spatters of freckles the whole year round. Andy, • ho is a pixie, is one of these lucky ones. Some people gather a few freckles only during the sunny summer months and lose them when winter comes. A few unfortunates never get a freckle from one year to the next.
In most matters, Andy and his young readers are in complete agreement. But when it comes to his opinions about freckles, he has only a few faithful followers. In his opinion, freckles are beauty spots and any young person who feels ashamed, annoyed or embarrassed because of these beauty spots is making a sorry mistake.
Andy, who is very old, reports that all the great beauties of history knew the value of freckles. Cleopatra had flocks of freckles on her nose. Helen of Troy was spattered with freckles on her face, arms and even on her sandaled feet. Poor Madam Pompadour, who rarely went outdoors where she could gather her freckles, tried to make up for this sad loss. She stuck patches of black velvet on her face and called them beauty spots.
Freckles, of course, are caused by sunshine. You might say that each one of the pretty brown spots is the result of a kiss from an affectionate sunbeam. The sunshine stirs a brownish pigment which is normally buried in deep layers of the skin. The pigment then comes to the surface where it can be seen and some lucky person becomes the owner of a freckle.
The skin is a great deal more than a thin jacket to cover the body. It is a complex organ with many duties to perform. It has oil glands and sweat glands and tiny roots which can grow hairs.
It has blood vessels and nerves, some of which give us the sense of touch. In thickness, it varies from one sixth to one fiftieth of an inch. The outer layer of skin, called the epidermis, is a thin tissue of cells which constantly flake away. The working skin is the dermis, or lower layer. In the dermis there is a brown pigment called melmin and dark people have more melanin than blond people. The kiss of a gentle sunbeam brings a gab of melanin up from the dermis to the epidermis where it can be seen as a freckle. It fades when the epidermis cells flake away and are replaced by new cells grown by the dermis.
Some sensible communities have contests and crown a King and Queen of Freckledom. But you cannot win such a contest by baking your skin in the hot sun. This leads only to a painful sunburn which can be dangerous. Stray sunbeams are more likely to leave freckles on people who spend time outdoors going about their work and play in a normal, casual way.