Along with summer comes the insatiable hunger to have the “bronze glow,” to show off just how much more tan you can get than your friend without turning into a fire-roasted crustacean.
So comes the day when I decide to conform to what everyone else’s pastime has become this season. Out of respect for the neighbors and for any passersby, I take the time to set up the tanning booth my father had attempted and failed to patent many years before. It works, for about a day, before tumbling to the earth in the middle of the windy night. Hoping not to repeat the incident, I set up a barricade of lawn furniture, mostly chairs, grills, trashcans, and a large sheet, for some privacy. Not so long after, a variety of garden insects begin to flock to the shaded region, from which I have no escape and eventually have to vault myself over our R2D2-shaped grill to flee a demon-possessed fire ant.
At this point, my neighbor Cindy decides to come home for lunch from her job at Radio Shack. She lumbers out of her Buick and begins watering the roses that line the fence separating our yards. Seriously, Cindy? Watering plants at one o’clock in the afternoon? She takes her time making sure that every stem is fully hydrated and finally makes the long trek back up her steps.
Ah sweet privacy! But not for long. Just as I am breathing a sigh of relief, there is simultaneous commotion coming from both the alleyway and the neighbors across the street. My head snaps both directions and I gather that, one, a band of hooligans is about to parade past the back of my house and two, my other neighbors have just come home and their children think it necessary to screech like wild banshees while chasing each other with giant sticks outside my driveway. I dive back into my batcave of gardening machinery and lawn tables.
Then comes the third attempt. I hang a sheet from the clothesline and pin it to chairs on the ground, using the fence as the other wall. I finally feel assured that this method will be fail-proof. I enjoy myself, basking in the warm sunlight for those enjoyable 30 seconds before a small family of wasps decides to buzz around the foliage surrounding the fence, about 2 feet away from me. At first they don’t bother me too badly, but soon I find myself suspiciously opening one eye to watch them as they fly overhead. Visions of “My Girl” and Macaulay Culkin dying a horrible death near the wasps’ nest races through my mind.
Persuaded that yes, I will be a shade darker by the end of the day, I scoot my chair away from the clothesline, away from the wasps, and a few feet further from the fence. I then clothespin a sheet to a trashcan and two lawn chairs, a variation of my earlier barricade. They only cover one side, but it is an improvement. A wasp buzzes over my face about 4 minutes in. By now, I wouldn’t have cared if a cheeseburger-sized grasshopper were tap dancing on my leg. I just don’t want to get stung. I glance at my tan line, hoping that I will be dark enough to go in now, but no! “Curse this worthless Mexican blood!” I think, “What’s the point if I can’t even tan like we’re supposed to?”
Still, I will not be dissuaded. I think back to my church camp speakers and Shannon Etheridge-reading years regarding modesty and whatnot and a small twinge of guilt stirs my soul…and lasts for about two seconds. I am fuming and this is the last straw.
I grab my clothes, throw them on the ground in a rebellious fit, then pick them back up again almost immediately as I recalled the tiny spiders that will jump on anything sitting on the grass. I resume my defiant attitude and grab my chair, thrust it in the middle of the lawn, and lie down, no barricades, no sheets, and definitely no grills. And I stay that way for a good 20 minutes before I have to go inside due to heart palpitations and overheating. So there. I have done it. Forget modesty. Forget respect. It’s too much work! I am victorious. I waltz inside, my ego soaring that I have done such a daring feat. I look in the mirror and look for my tan line, expecting a complete transformation.
I have darkened about ¼ of a shade.
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