OuchyKim and I went to the beach today after her therapy stuff. I rolled her across the boardwalks until we reached the beach. The boardwalk used to walk a bit farther, but the hurricane changed all that. Lots of sand blew up the walkway, eliminating twenty feet in length and three in depth. Very special.
OuchyKim was looking for shells. I was walking in the surf. I was thinking of wanting to be home, wishing that BrilliantEditor could be with me. The wind was in my hair and the air was thick with salt. The waves were pulling sand from beneath my feet and, although I had my skirt lifted up my calves, its hem was getting wet.
I looked out into the ocean watching huge ships go by. I wondered how far away they were, how big they were, where they were going, how long it would take. I thought about the vast emptiness and loneliness. In all, I felt rather tragic and poetic.
Assuming that I was, indeed, tragic and poetic, I looked down at my feet expecting to find some kind of symbolic item there. A key, perhaps, or a shell broken in such a way that it would evoke answers to unanswerable questions. I might see my footprints melting away after filling with water turned gold from the sunset.
I did not see any of those things. Instead, I had a different discovery.
The discovery was my skin.
I got mildly sunburned on Sunday. It wasn’t bad, but my skin looked pink and kind of wrinkly. Days later, I am back to my normal-ish self.
OuchyKim is Korean; so she’s already tan. I am neither Korean nor tan and feel like I’ll overexpose any photo I’m in with my supreme whiteness. I want this to end! I also want to make people laugh when they see me coming back looking as bronzed as Jennifer Lopez. So I did what any logical pale woman in Florida would do.
I decided, “Hey! Why not do the fake tan stuff? Even though I know it doesn’t work, let’s try it anyway! It will be fun!”
Welcome to the world of un-fun. Upon the beach I received confirmation of my belief that fake tan doesn’t work for me. It looks like someone came along and rubbed carrots on me. This color is not bronze. It does not look beautiful. It does not look sexy.
It might look sexy to rabbits. They’d probably die from excited bliss looking at my tall carrot legs. Oh! The promise of tall carrots!
Posted by dotty at October 22, 2004 11:08 PM