“You’ve got to get a little,
Get a little every day
You get a sunburn right away
Your body’s brown as a berry
But you can’t lie down
Better let yourself cool down.”
A lovely 80’s song.
One of the funniest things I have seen was a girl, a friend of mine, sitting very gingerly (no pun intended) on a couch. She was glowing, and I don’t mean pregnant. She had fallen asleep on the beach face down, getting a few rays for a summer tan. Not uncommon in those days. I asked her to show me the damage, and she turned around, and showed me. I must admit it was a rather cute behind but now it looked like Rudolph’s nose had been smashed and smeared all over and I couldn’t stop snickering.
Helpfully I offered to rub some aloe vera onto it but she rather dryly declined. I can’t really blame her.
It is not like I am myself a paragon of good sun smarts. When I was a teenage, I was sports mad. One hot summer week, I had played field hockey, golf, cricket and water skiing. Sunscreen and or sunblock was not really a thing back then. So when I was up at the lakes skiing, in my budgie smuggles, with room for only one budgie. I swear I am not of my paternal parents’ line. Mum, you have some explaining to do.
Anyhow, if you had stripped me naked, you would see zones of colour, ranging from pale white to toasty red and all the shades in between. Various sporting gear covered various parts at various times leading to the patterns.
But all that sun did its work on me. At the end of the day, I had one of the worse experiences of my life (excluding that bloody dentist). I got heat stroke, but not only that, my sunburn turned into blisters and burst, leaking watery fluid and pus. Very attractive and rather unpleasant.
Is there a morality tale to this story? No, not really. But I suppose it brings me to another song.
“Baz Luhrmann – Everybody’s Free To Wear Sunscreen”