Monday, April 27, 2009

Hey..... This IS my Tan!

I am a white girl.

Scratch that, I'm the palest girl you will probably ever meet. Someone even signed that in my high school year book. I'm so white that my skin is almost transparent. You can see all my blood vessels.

I do not tan.

The sun is my natural enemy. Being such a white girl, I turn some shade of red or pink that fades right back to pale white. Yesterday, Spiderman had his first baseball game. I went to watch. I was wearing a long sleeved hoodie and shorts and it wasn't a particularly sunny day. In fact, it had rained a little that morning. I thought I was safe.

I was not.

My knees and ears are toast. I mean, they are lobster red. The skin feels tight and itchy and I know it's going to be gross once it peels.

Sometimes I wish that I could tan. When I was just out of high school it was really popular to go to the tanning beds. All my friends went until their skin looked leathery. I gave in to the peer pressure and gave it a try. I went to several sessions and OMG actually started to have some color! It was awesome.

Then one day, it all came to an end. I was always a nervous tanner. I have issues with laying still doing nothing for that long of time. Combine that with a slight fear of coffin-like machines and it's never pretty. This one day in particular I undressed and got into the tanning bed. I turned on the built in fans and put my little blue goggles on. I then prepared to wait out the 15 minutes of boredom that I knew was coming. As anyone who has been tanning knows, those lights are pretty hot and I started sweating. I could feel the sweat dripping off me and onto the bed. I heard a little sizzle as the sweat hit the hot lights. I also heard the hum of the machine and what I thought sounded like electrical current.
At this point I'm starting to get fidgety. I shifted around a little bit and then I felt it.......a sharp pain right in my ass! My first thought was "Oh my god I'm being electrocuted!"

I flung open the top of the bed, leaped out, and slammed it shut again. I stood in the tiny room buck naked completely freaking out that I had just been electrocuted.

That was not the case.

As I was frantically putting my clothes back on, out flew none other than a wasp. I have no idea how it got in there, but it had just stung me in the ass! I was so traumatized that I never went back. EVER.

I'm just going to embrace my whiteness.

And buy a lot of sunscreen!

3 comments:

Mimi's Toes said...

Thanks for a big laugh on this dreary Tuesday! I laughed so hard and could picture you hopping out of that bed with the wasp flying around. I bet that was a scary feeling. You should take a lesson from that though...tanning beds are not safe!!! I would take white over tan any day! I use to be a sun worshiper until all the talk about skin cancer and leather look when you age. I think you look great the way you are! You can always get a fake spray tan...

readsalot said...

I used to be a tanning bed worshipper. I loved the bed, though, because it was 15 minutes of relaxation. I had my ipod and tanning lotion and this was me time. Until I saw a picture of myself looking like an oompa loompa. That killed the sun worshipper right out of me. Now I am very pale and get sun poisoning when exposed for very long. Wearing sunscreen.

Jen said...

I've never been tanning and thanks to this gem of a story, I never will!!!