A Monday Memory....

Recalling a habit which could only fall into the "What was I thinking?" category, I had a discussion with daughter #1 recently about the manner in which I would begin the summer tanning season as a teen.

Friends and I would go "down the shore" with the express intent of obtaining a suntan. Arriving on the sandy beach around nine a.m., we would commence the ritual by generously lathering our bodies with Johnson's baby oil.  Towels were then unfurled, and we would lie down for the next eight hours, turning over every half hour or so, breaking only for lunch or bathroom breaks.  This was serious business, mind you, so despite the heat and boredom, we persevered through the day.

You can imagine what we looked like by eight p.m.  Red as cooked lobsters!!  What other result did we expect?  When reading the description above it strikes me, as it may you, that it is not unlike the recipe my mother taught me for broiling chicken!  So yes, that is essentially what I did.  I literally broiled myself there on the sand.  

What (or rather who) finally cured me of this insane behavior?  Our neighbor across the street from the first house the Englishman and I lived in.

Betty was a lovely woman and the only one in the neighborhood who spoke to us.  She worked in the local school and took the summers off.  She had a membership for the swimming pool at hotel nearby. Like my "teen" self, she would lie by the pool for hours.  Oh and it showed. By summer's end, she was as bronze as mahogany wood.  And wrinkled.  Heavily, heavily wrinkled.  In fact the wrinkles were so deep that her skin hung in folds.  I was shocked to learn she was more than ten years younger than what I suspected was her age.  

That did it for me.  I vowed then and there to stop sunning myself ever again.  I saw my future before me and I was horrified by it.  All the preaching, warnings, and pleadings by my parents did nothing to dissuade me in the way in which Betty's image before me did.  Here, in the flesh, was proof to me of what years of repeated tanning could do.  

Sunscreen became a staple in our house as our girls were growing up and I tried very hard to limit their exposure to the sun.  These days, I religiously apply sunscreen to my face and try to limit the exposure to my arms and legs to fifteen minutes or so, just to get a dose of vitamin D.  Then on goes the sunscreen.

And finally, I silently thank Betty for the skin saving lesson she taught me all those years ago.