Thursday, May 3, 2012

Remember Baby Oil and Iodine

That used to be the miracle suntan formula when I was growning up. People used to literally fry themselves in the sun. The darker the better was the motto back in the 70's. Skin cancer was for old people. Nobody else had to worry about it.

Unfortunately for me I spent half my childhood (an exaggeration of course) in front of a fan slathered with noxzema from head to toe. That was the only cure for sunburn back then and I always had a sunburn. I was a blonde haired, blue eyed little girl with the whitest skin on earth and my mom wanted nothing more than for me to have a tan.

She would send me into the sun and tell me not to worry if I burned. Her logic was, "it will turn to a tan anyway." Unfortunately that never happened with me. I would just burn and peel, burn and peel again. Of course, I spent plenty of time in the sun playing on my own and once we hit a pool or a lake you couldn't drag me or my brother and sister out.

Sis told me that her mom and my mom used to drag her out and show off her tan! They would do this by pulling down her pants and showing the world her butt so they could see her tanline! Now that had to be humiliating! My mom may have complained that I never tanned but she never stripped me down to show it off. What a strange way parents had of doing things back then. Can you imagine if somebody did that now?

Once I got a little older and had enough sense to stay out of the sun (for the most part) I got into a fierce arguement with Bobby's sister's boyfriend one time. He was punishing her son, Dwayne. He made him set on the bottom step of the porch. Which would have been fine except for the fact that the boy was sitting in the hot sun and he was a fair complected as me. So I knew what was going to happen to him.

All I did was move the child to the top step so he would be out of the sun. This started world war 3 in the house. But I won. I didn't try to prevent the punishement. I just got him out of the sun but I got a big speech about undermining "his" authority. I didn't care. He was surprised that a mere woman would stand up to him but I didn't care. It's not the first man I have stood up to in my life and it wasn't the last.

gotts go.

No comments: