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Show ' I O: Tern (D)90D)clk WMsttlle l by David Fleisher ;A warm weather casualty I ; i: I have suffered my first warm - weather casualty: I got sunburned over ; the weekend. It makes me upset when I get '.. sunburned, because I should know better. See, I was raised in Florida . where it's sunny most of the year. ,,: When I was in high school, my friends .; and I would make fun of "northerners" ;J who came down for the winter. They were bleach white when they hit Florida in November, and by the time !, they left in the spring, they looked like Pistachio nuts. I would kid them about it: "Don't ": you know any better? You can't sit out on the beach all day and not get totally toasted. Don't you have sun in New n'4 York? Don't you know what it can do to you if you get too much of it? You look like a roasted peanut! Do you think that's attractive looking?" ' ;' This is why I feel embarrassed that I ,; got sunburned. If any of those in "northerners" could see me now, I'm ' most certain they would seek revenge. ' And quite frankly, I wouldn't blame them. The reason I got sunburned over the weekend is because I simply wasn't thinking. I was daydreaming, which isn't the same as thinking. There's nothing wrong with daydreaming, except that it shouldn't be done in 70 degree weather under a blazing sun. You lose track of time when you daydream. You aren't really on top of things when you daydream. You tend to fantasize a lot when you daydream. You drift from one meaningless thought to the next, and feel relaxed with no cares and no worries; that is, until after three hours when you try to get up. When I was in Florida, I would laugh at the idiots who tried to get up after being in the sun for several hours. Invariably, the wife would say to the husband: "Oh, honey! Look at you! You're burnt to a crisp!" The husband would grimace in pain, and off they would go to their hotel room two more victims of the sun. Now that may not strike you as funny, and when I look back on it, it wasn't funny. But when you're a teenager, being overly sensitive to other people is not always high on the priority list. Unfortunate, but true-. When I finally got up to go inside, the first thing I noticed was my chest. It was red. And then I noticed my arms. They were red. And then I noticed my legs. They were red. I went inside, looked in the mirror and noticed my nose. It was also red. In fact, my whole face was red "My God, I look like E.T.!" I said aloud. Looking like E.T. is one thing, but feeling like E.T. is even worse. There's only one word to describe how I felt: pain. As I stood in front of the mirror, I said, "So this is how that guy in Florida felt. And I laughed at him." I began to feel guilty. And then I heard this voice over my shoulder: "Look at you! You're burnt to a crisp!" Quickly, I turned around, but there was no one there. They got their revenge. As I walk up Main Street I hear the Ten O'Clock Whistle. |
