For as long as I can remember, I had this ugly growth on my left-rear hip.

It wasn’t particularly large — bigger than a mole, smaller than an arm or leg — or grotesquely colored or anything, but it just didn’t belong.

I generally don’t go around flashing my hip, so it wasn’t obvious most days, but anytime I went to the pool, for instance, or it was topless night at work, I was awfully self-conscious of my hideousness.

My kids asked about it. Occasionally it snagged on my clothing, and though it didn’t hurt, it felt disconcerting, like I’d imagine it’d feel to tug on the hair sticking out of a witch’s wart. (And if that didn’t give you the heebie-jeebies, you’re either dead inside or you have a thing for witches. Or hairy warts.)

I was confident it wasn’t a threat to my health, but since I subscribe to the Big Dumb Guy’s School of Doctor Avoidance, I pretty much ignored it. According to the BDGSDA charter, the affliction either clears up on its own, or kills you dead.

I pretended it didn’t exist for years, until one day at the (gasp!) doctor’s office for something unrelated, I — concerned about the horrific effect it might have on my second career as an underwear model — casually asked, “As long as I’m here, could you take a look at this?”

My doctor took a look, flicked it and quickly diagnosed it as a mere skin tag, a benign fold of skin he’d be glad to remove — at my next visit. He explained there was some rule against diagnosing and treating on the same day — I’m guessing he’d make an exception for, say, a sucking chest wound or arrow to the eye socket, though, in fairness, I probably could self-diagnose those and create a life-saving loophole — and I made an appointment later in the week.

“It’ll be painless,” my doctor assured.

The day of the appointment, a nurse led me to a back room, asked me to lift my shirt and jabbed a huge needle in my side. Ouch!

The doctor came back and hooked me up to a contraption that looked like a large arc-welder and explained the procedure. (I dried my tears and mentioned the needle wasn’t painless, as he’d promised. He laughed and said, “I meant it’d be painless for me.”)

Two seconds later, my nose still tingling with the smell of rancid, burned manflesh, I was on my way, my skin tag vaporized.

I was thrilled. No longer would I have to chat up supermodels at the poolside bar with my left side cloaked by a potted fern. No more witch-wart-hair heebie-jeebies. No more interrogations from — and horrified looks by — my kids.

My love-handles are blemish-free, smooth (and flaccid) as a baby’s behind.

But … every now and then, I feel a phantom skin tag. My hand goes behind my back just to check. It’s still smooth, but I swear something snagged on that wool sweater. Or I just had a witch-wart-hair heebie-jeebie.

I thought about that long-lost-but-not-forgotten freakish monstrosity the other day as I was riding to work.

There’s a road a couple of miles from home that I probably ride on 90 out of 100 rides, whether I’m heading to work or out for a recreation ride or to the store. I’ve ridden on that road hundreds of times over the 13 years I’ve lived in my house, and I’ve come to know it quite well.

Just as I could pass a road-side drunk test by closing my eyes, reaching around and putting my right index finger smack-dab in the middle of my old skin tag, I knew every bump and hump in that road.

One stretch in particular was particularly bad for bikes, a string of divots and gaps a driver would barely notice, but cyclists would be wise to steer around. For hundreds of rides, I’d look over my left shoulder, ease toward the center of the road and think how one particular gap was just big enough to swallow a narrow bike tire and send a cyclist tumbling.

Then just the other day, I was riding that road and noticed road crews were working on it.

A couple of days later, I rode on it and saw no piecemeal chip-and-seal patching, but a full-on piecemeal black-topping. It’s not perfect, but compared to the way it was, it rides like glass.

But every time since, I still find myself looking over my shoulder and easing into the center of the road, hoping to avoid the blemish that is no more.

Old habits — just like grody deformities — die hard.

• • •

In case you missed it, this is local (and national) Bike to Work Week.

To mark the occasion, Sunflower Horizons and WellCommons will be hosting a Bike to Work Day breakfast from 6:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. Friday in front of Sunflower Outdoor and Bike Shop. Ride by for coffee, juice and a light breakfast.

If I can drag my lazy, skin-tagless behind out of the sack, I might stop by as well.