Personally I've stopped caring for the summer tan brigade, a heretical action in the general mindset of Southern California residents. There are two things in particular that have shaped me to make this Sophie's Choice.
At one point I was at the beach nearly every day, due to a bizarre and unsaid competition between my friend Connie and I. We never said out loud that we were trying to out-tan each other, it was just implied. So we spent days at a time stretched out at the beach, our long sessions punctuated by the inconvenient and inevitable earth rotations blocking the sun. Once, while we were laying there, I fell asleep on my back with my head resting on my hands. I woke up looking like a cartoon character with white gloves due to my newly acquired tan lines. While Connie sat there laughing at me, I took comfort in the fact that I had earlier given her a friendly pat on the back with a handful of sunscreen, so while I was aware of my new fashion accessory, she was not of the small, but very noticeable, white handprint in the middle of her back. It wasn't until I got home that the extent of the problem was realized. Generally, when someone puts sunscreen on, they put it on any part of the body that's going to be facing the sun. Let's face it, no one is going to put any on any part they don't plan on exposing, unless of course it involves some sort of kinky sex game. Another place people have a tendency to skip is the armpit, including myself. When I got home to shower, I noticed an itchy burn there, and upon investigation realized that I had suffered one of my worst sunburns under my armpit. I slathered the area with aloe vera, but what more could I do? The next few days proved to be a chore. Walking became a hassle as I tried to hold out my arms without being noticed, something which only compounded the attention when my hands kept brushing against people's butts. Putting on deodorant I might as well have just rubbed alcohol all over the burn, but shaving was an entirely different kind of hell. It didn't feel so much as shaving as it felt like running rusty knife blades under my armpit, sobbing in the shower the entire time I forced myself to go through this punishment worthy of Dante. Of course, the more reasonable thing to do would be to go without shaving or deodorant for a t least a few days, just to let the skin heal. However, this incident occurred during my years in high school, where logic and rationale has yet to triumph over emotion. Today if I did that, I would just explain the situation to my friends and no one would hold it against me. In school though, not wearing deodorant or shaving is the exact kind of thing that leads to traumatic high school experiences that movies with Sissy Spacek are made. While I was never popular, I was at least determined to be unpopular, and shaving was the way to do it. After that incident, the tanning was reduced to only weekends, and I haven't since lifted up my arms at the beach.
Certain things that I do on a regular basis tan me anyway, like driving. I consider myself a fairly good driver, but I'm not the best. In fact, my motions may not look erratic, but the pattern of my driving is. I can be overly safe, when waiting to cross a busy street, and sometimes the time between cars passing is enough to make a simple sandwich before I decide to cross the street. Today I was staring at my arm. I've noticed that there's a new mark on my arm. I've been trying to determine whether it's just a particularly stuck fleck of dirt, or if it's a new mole. When I don't feel sonething's right with my body, my mind immediately thinks the worst, and the worst usually ends in death, of which I'm terrified. The thing about driving is that it allows me an unobstructed view of my arms, so I can squirm for lengths of time about my new body marks. I even keep paper in my glove compartment for the documentation of such things, so that I can take my shoebox of new freckles for my doctor to look over and then tell me that I'm being paranoid. I put on sunscreen everytime I leave the house, but I can't obstruct the sun from my car without completely obscuring my vision and turning my car into my own portable sauna. I've written some ideas, but they all seem to have some sort of safetly issue that would keep me off the road. While I was in my car, staring at my arms, I looked up for some reason when I realized that I had driven for nearly twenty minutes with my eyes glued on my arms. I must have seen the road as well, but I didn't remember any of it. All I remember is the small dark spot just above my left elbow. I told my mom about this, and after a "What the hell were you thinking?" and a few "I can't believe you's" she questioned why I had given up on tanning because of this. Clearly, she had no idea the problem that tanning posed for me. Tanning had made me into a reckless driver. She may not understand, but tanning for me has proven dangerous not only to my life, but my social life as well.
