Confessions of a Sunburned Drama Queen

I haven't been sunburned in probably five years. Actually, the last time I recall the sun having any effect on my skin color was five years ago and I didn't even get burned that summer in Florida.

I guess it's more precise to say, I haven't been sunburned in OVER five years and to go on and say, I'd forgotten how much it sucks.

-side note: even with my vocabulary as extensive as it is, and even on my good days, I cannot find one word that can hold a candle to the nice connotation I find in the word "suck"-

This sunburn isn't as awful as it could be. It's not like one of the more notorious southern burns I've received in years previous. Anyone who's spent a summer down here equipped with an SPF any less than 20 knows what I'm talking about. It's that sunburn that hurts so bad even a light cotton shirt feels like a chimerical of razors against your skin. I can recall sunburns so horrendous that if it were a windy day out I'd stay inside (standing, of course) because the mere blow of the wind against my overly rouged skin would cause me to wince in pain.

Sunburn also makes you sleepy. It makes you hot and cold at the same time. It's an evil two-faced bitch of a condition that is most definitely something only hell could hath wrought. Whatever deity is responsible for Chinese water torture and the soggy biscuit game is also to blame for sunburn.

Sunburn makes you heavy; limbs like molasses. It makes me recall a very specific time in my short life. It brings me back to certain summers at my dad's house. Dad had this canvas swing. It wasn't one of those wooden slat swings on an A-frame. It was those cheeky newer models for the patio-loving families that were keeping up with the Jones' backyard. This swing was comprised of a steel frame with canvas stretched over it and topped with cushions. Cushions, which mind you, were quite impractical for a backyard swing. Every time those fabulous tornado watches hit north Alabama my brother and I were forced to run out in the backyard to retrieve those precious cushions which lay unprotected by the canvas canopy that finished out the contraption.

I used to take naps on that swing. In the middle of the summer, afternoons mostly, when the sun was setting and shining straight into our backyard and into my little cove of a swing, I would sleep there. I would lay there all cozy and warm with no concern for mosquitoes, ticks, or any other six-legged beast that roam the backyard. It's odd that I never got sunburned doing this. This was before I was the person I am today, moping about in fall clothes even when our temperature tops out at 104. I was in shorts and usually some sort of t-shirt or tank top. Hell, some days I was in a bathing suit (I can't imagine why, what with my hatred of swimming).

There's no real point to this anecdote. I've been laying heavily in my bed since we arrived home and the only other memory I have from a feeling such as this was when I was 14 and got full blown heat stroke somewhere between the Savannah River and the Atlantic Ocean. That story really is much more entertaining but it incites great anger in me due to the lack of intelligence on the part of a hospital in Arlington. How I got to Virginia to be in a hospital in Arlington to begin with is a whole different tale. It's also not a story I felt like writing out this evening seeing as it involves much description of bodily functions on both ends, and that's just downright unladylike to discuss.