Wear Sunscreen

If you have never heard the essay set to music and turned into a song by Baz Luhrmann (it was turned into a song by Luhrmann, but written by a woman named Mary Schmich in 1997 for the Chicago Tribune- Wikipedia is to be thanked for this helpful bit of information), you should go on youtube right now and listen to it, because it is amazing and will help to add another layer beyond the superficial to my blog title. While the majority of this blog will have to do with the wise advice of wearing sunscreen and the adverse effects of choosing to disregard said advice, in it I will also try to communicate some lessons I think should actually be learned, preferably not the hard way. Trust me, learning the hard way is called that for a reason and should be avoided at all costs. I learned the hard way this past weekend about disregarding the tip about sunscreen.

Taking advantage of the national holiday, three friends and I decided to head to the shore. The shore is one of few things I absolutely love about Jersey. It is such a novelty for beaches to be sandy and the water to be more than barely warmer than an ice cube. Granted the water temperature on Monday was probably in the 60's and still made one yell with shock when plunging into its depths, it definitely beat the 45 degree water that I swam in every summer growing up. But I digress.

Vanity got the best of me that hot spring day (I really wanted to say summer, but it's not officially summer yet is it? Sad). I put sunscreen on in the morning, an hour and a half before we hit the beach. After laying out in the sun, with minimal protection on my body, I went in the water. I did not reapply sunscreen. Three hours later, I went back into the water. Again, I did not reapply. Finally, when I could begin to feel the skin on my shoulders crisping, I put a little bit of sunscreen on. At that point, it was much too late. The damage was done. Let me just tell you, the damage was pretty bad. I have never been this badly burned in my life. Thankfully, it did not blister. However, my skin took on the vibrant hue of a lobster fresh from the pot and became murderously tender to the touch. Let's just say that sleeping became the worst kind of adventure. For the past two days I have been yelping at every touch and unable to make it through the night without being woken up by the awful stinging sensation of my destroyed skin reminding me of the damage that had been wreaked by sun because of my vain stupidity. I admit it, I wanted a great tan and was willing to risk getting burned. I am quite thankful that it was not as bad as it could have been, but this burn has definitely made me much more hesitant to neglect sunscreen in the future.

In the past few months, wearing sunscreen is not the only bit of advice I wish I would have paid more heed to. I wish I was living in the moment more and not getting caught up in worry. I need constant reminding that, "worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum." I should be nicer to my siblings and I should not be so willing to put up with those who are reckless with my heart (whether intentionally or unintentionally). Those are only a few of the many pieces of advice I would like to be better at applying to my life.

I am hitting that point where I am running out of things to say. That seems to happen quite often lately. My mind does not seem to want to stop, but then I start to write down my thoughts and in the middle of this exercise everything comes to a screeching halt. Not that I was writing or was going to write any sort of literary masterpiece. As a parting token, I will again advise you to listen to "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)" by Baz Luhrmann. I don't think you'll regret it.