Sunscreen

Friday, May 29, 2015

Today I am grateful for sunscreen. When I was a kid we never even heard of sunscreen. Seriously. We fried and loved it. Until now, when our skin is paying the price.

As teenagers, it was a Memorial Day tradition to pack a picnic and go to Long Lake for the day. We’d swim in the still cold water and bake in the sun, slathering ourselves with baby oil like basted rotisserie chickens. It wasn’t a good holiday if blisters didn’t pop out on my shoulders the next day, making wearing a bra or clothing with seams impossible and causing no end of pain. When they popped and peeled, the skin crackled like foil. What on earth were we thinking? We weren’t.

It is no long fun for me to bake in the sun for second degree burns. Now I feel like second degree burns are, well, SECOND DEGREE BURNS! Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Each time my husband or I visit the dermatologist, and she carves off another piece of us, I ask, “What caused this?” She smiles, nasty surgical tool and skin-blowtorch in hand and asks, “Did you sunbathe as a kid?” Then she zaps. . .again. . .probably dreaming of her shore house that she’ll get off the skin of geezers who were once stupid kids.

So to those of you who still bake and rotate and baste with baby oil trying to look like you are from another race, knock yourselves out. I’ll be the one with the hat on, sitting in the shade, slathered in sunscreen. . .glowing in my fish-belly white skin!

rnat|L<Ed