What have I not yet learned about sunburns?

Jack Tripper walked through the door during this photo shoot and hilarity ensued.

On Saturday afternoon I decided I was going to achieve tanned legs. (Much like greatness or a pleasant buzz, tanned legs are a state of being, the likes of which are achieved, as in the case of the former, over the span of a lifetime or, as with the latter example, in the 45 minutes before your husband's office party.) Despite never having had so much as even a jaundice-hued kneecap, I decided that on pure will I could manage this feat in two hours of afternoon sun. (We were heading to Boston for the night and I wanted to wear a dress without looking like a body balanced on two tampons.)

Tanning my legs has always been difficult, particularly given the fact that they have not been exposed to sunlight in over 15 years. While my shins catch (but fail to absorb) the occasional ray, my thighs have been in vampire-like hiding since I was about 13. As a kid, I started off wearing boxers over bikini bottoms during bathing suit season and then when waterproof board shorts started showing up in stores, I felt a relief similar to what I imagine the flat-chested teenager feels when she discovers the padded bra. (Or the 29-year-old.) This "nobody has to know" attitude about my perceived teenhood flaws never really left, such that over the years my thighs have come to rival the late J.D. Salinger in their lack of public appearances. (I once recovered a second grade journal in which, in response to a writing prompt asking what three wishes I would lay down before a genie, "thinner thighs" was on the list. The other two? A date with my eight-year-old crush "and we would kiss" and infinite more wishes. Smart kid...also self-conscious and horny, apparently.) (This last aside could be depressing if you think about it too hard, so don't.)

I write this, of course, not as a call to arms regarding our culture's warped obsession with body image (or mine alone). That is another essay for another day, perhaps for another another writer. Maybe when I have a little girl someday on whom I want to impress the importance of self-acceptance, I'll put some energy towards this and get all Kirstie Alley on your ass, baring all on Oprah. (By then TV won't even be called TV anymore, it'll just be called Oprah.) But for now I will continue to cover my thighs---if I could have them walk three feet behind me I would---and embrace the fact that I'm helping neither the women's movement, nor the little girls of America, nor myself in doing so. (Instead of being all Kirstie Alley, I'll just be all Mel Gibson and say, "They may take my bra, but they'll never take my flowered sarong! Or I could be all Whitney, "No matter what they take from me, they can't take away my lower extremity mo-des-ty!")

The point---because I swear to God there was one (albeit not one of particular importance or even interest)---is that my attempt to become a golden goddess before sundown was more like painting the white roses red a la Alice in Wonderland. For two hours I lay face down in the grass and now my near transparent paleness has been replaced with throbbing redness. The skin is so taut with burn that a slight scratch of an itch feels like I'm slashing my back with my nails. (Not pictured, reddened backs of thighs and knees. I thought the bizarre picture up top---there's sort of a plucked chicken thing going on there, right?---best served my purpose. Plus, I would rather feature a live stream of my yearly pap smear than post pictures of my thighs.)

I have learned this lesson about sunburns so very many times. As a kid, my mom once had to lay me between two oversized towels that had been soaked in cold water to help cool me down after a full-body blistering burn. Just last week I made an appointment with a dermatologist to have a scary freckle (I think that's the medical term) looked at (on the back of my thigh, no less). I have had burns so bad I couldn't sit. I've had burns so bad I couldn't sleep. And if the pain wasn't enough to teach me about my weak Irish skin, you would think the fact that a sister of mine once had melanoma would. (I'll say it again...genetic cesspool.)

But some lessons need to be learned and relearned apparently, and my refresher course credits have been issued for the summer of 2010. Like the hippie who finally embraced the condom, so too will I embrace the SPF. So, return to the airbrush spray tan I shall and never again will I stray.

Because the greeeeeatest tan of all is easy to achieve
Learning to paint it on
makes for the greatest tan of all.