I spent the better half of my childhood sitting on a towel waiting for my sunscreen to soak in while my family frolicked in water. I hated my fair skin as a child because it made me different.
My mom told me the sprinkle of freckles on my nose were angel kisses. My sister countered with a terrible false adoption story and stories of children scrubbing their freckles off. Lucky for me I’ve grown into my freckles and my nose recovered from the scrubbing.
The worst sunburn I ever had was at the age of six. We were at a beach in Lake Tahoe and I’d made a new beach friend for the day. We were scrambling around some play equipment when my new friend asked if I wanted some sun tan lotion. Only it wasn’t sun lotion, it was sun tan OIL. My new friend lathered up my back and I promptly fell asleep on the play equipment.
My mother said it couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes before she found me. Maybe it was the burn accelerator on my back? The high altitude? Or perhaps a combination of the two that made my skin burn so fast. It was the worst fucking sunburn ever.
My young back was so fried it turned purple. And not pretty pale lavender purple. Deep, dark, fucking purple. With blisters. I couldn’t even wear a shirt. I spent nearly a week laying face down on the couch waiting for family members to apply aloe. The rest of the week was spent praying for the sweet relief of death.
As Bill Clinton would have said, “Lobster girl, I feel your pain.”
I try to avoid the sun. Hard to do in Vegas, but I try.
Interesting topic seeing as how I burned like a tortilla at my folks’ pool yesterday.
Fried to a crisp, doesn’t sound fun. I’m a lip balm addict too by the way, kinda have to be living in Chicago. Sometimes during the winters my lips crack so much that they bleed, and I go through like, a Bonne Bell a week!