Acne is an embarrassment. I know. I'm a teenage boy who can't get dates because of how my face looks. Well, I guess it's also because of how shy I am because of it, too. Jim gets dates, but his acne isn't as bad as mine. So what do I do about it? I'm big on web searches. Some day I'm going to write a book called ?Web Searching to Solve Your Problems.? But right now I just want to clear up my acne.

I hear a lot of stories about what's causing my acne, so I go look to see what's what about that. It's kind of like searching Snopes for urban legends. Turns out that my pastor was wrong about what causes acne. Good thing. My mother was wrong, too. She said I ate too much chocolate and fried food. There's no research to prove that diet causes acne. I know. I looked it up. So forget that one, too.

So, what else? Oh, yeah. Stress. They say stress causes acne. How much stress could I have? Dad works. Mother works, too. She also cooks & cleans. I just go to school and worry about whether I can get a date with Jill or not. Well, that's stress, but I don't think it caused my acne!

It looks like there is good research saying that benzoyl peroxide works. Okay. So I'll use some of that. I looked it up on . They have this whole regimen. One for men that tells me how to shave. One for women that talks about make up. Yuck.

I'm trying it. It seems to be working. There's other stuff out there on the web if this doesn't work. I found where they can even do laser treatment on acne. Seems like we can laser just about anything. Hopefully, mine will clear up before then, but if not. I'll try anything! I really want to go out with Jill!

About this writer

Bud Mettarod is a teenager living in Los Angeles. He loves online role-playing games and his iPod is his friend. You can read more articles about acne at