Yesterday I headed up a car wash that a former Center resident hosted at her place of employment. And spent four and a half hours on asphalt during the most sun-intensive hours of a day that was within one degree of being the hottest for its date in sixty years of South Bend history.
Without sunscreen.
You idiot! you say. Yup. I don't currently even own sunscreen; ordinarily I spend so little time in the sun preserving my ivory pallor that I don't need it. And yesterday I paid for it. And last night. And this morning. And right now.
My shoulders are on FIRE. Yesterday when I left the parking lot I smelled faintly of bacon, from my own skin cooking in the UV rays. I had trouble sleeping last night; the pain kept waking me up. I've felt faintly nauseous.
Now, if I don't die of sun poisoning (which I strongly doubt I will), in a few days I'll have a gorgeous base tan. Currently, however, my ponytailed hair where it touches the back of my neck feels as warm as though it spent time in the microwave.
I'm like a space heater of strawberry-ice-cream-colored skin.
8 comments:
OUCH. Reminds me of the time I went without sun screen in Israel for a mere half hour ... left a burn so bad I was in agony for weeks. Stupid!
This year, a friend has advised, and I agree, to get a tan to fit in with los mexicanos as much as possible. Having never tanned with intent before, I'm not sure how it will come out, but here's hoping that I won't look like fried tomato gringa. < fingers crossed >
Do you ever try to tan?
Oh, Sarah, DO join me in the non-tanning club. Ever since a painful experience on the inner quad sophomore year, I've sworn off sun entirely - at least sun taken in without benefit of SPF 45 sunscreen. I would have made a fabulous Victorian lady. Come on - we'll be the only ones still gorgeous when we're 35!
There's nothing worse than warm strawberry icecream. We have to stop being friends while you brown over.
Being a brown-skinned girl, I've always tanned easily (like a noticeable difference within a half hour in the sun), and never really burned. Until I went to the Bahamas, and laid out in the sun for 6 hours without reapplying (I WAS wearing sublock, I always put on spf 45 or something crazy like that). So, anyway, I baked myself in the Bahaman sun all day, and after going back to my cabin (I was on a cruise), I woke up from a nap with searing pain coming from my shoulders, and I whimpered to my sister (my white half-sister), "dear God, what is this hellish feeling?" and she looked at me with disdain and said "you got a sunburn, stupid." Since that fateful day, I never tease my fair-skinned friends about sunburn. Because it is horrible.
LOL, I LOVE it. Sisters are marvelous beings.
Yes, I hail from the Nordic lands of snow and ice...not quite Scandinavian, more like Scots-Irish and German, and boy do my tribes not know how to handle the cruel sun.
But we can throw logs around and make killer clocks.
Ha. We Swedes (or half-Swedes) are lousy tanners too, but if you need any logs thrown, meatballs prepared or horned helmets modeled, I'm your gal.
How about quarter-Swedes? It's not fair, my sisters got all my father's Sicilian/Spanish genes and consequently get great tans; I got stuck with the pale, Northern European skin of my mother but the blah brown hair and eyes of something in between. Sigh. I just cannot get away from my maternal roots no matter how hard I try.
Sarah, I want you to run to your grocery store right now and by Banana Boat After Sun lotion.
It's got Aloe Vera in it, so it'll sooth the skin, but it's also a lotion, so your skin won't dry out and will be less likely to peel. I'm serious when I say this.
You're talking to the guy who had to take a day off work and roll around on the carpet naked because it body burned and itched so much following a traumatic tanning bed experience.
I burned quite badly earlier this summer, and using that lotion, for the first time ever, I didn't peel. AND ACTUALLY TANNED.
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