Sunburns & Aloe (how I subjected myself to an enormous amount of pain)
There was recently a thread on Somethingawful about stupid mistakes we have made in our past but wont do again, the theme over at SA was to draw a picture in MS Paint of stupid things you have done. This thread reminded me of something which happened to me over the summer.
My dad was in town from Florida over fathers day weekend and myself, my brother and his family decided to take him to the zoo because, quite frankly, that is where my dad belongs. Ok, maybe he doesn’t belong in a zoo, although he does belong in some sort of bad joke hell because my dad is a fountain of really bad and corny jokes not to mention email forwards and their ilk. But I digress. So we went to the zoo and seeing how I hadn’t seen my dad in awhile I decided to get a haircut right before he got here so I could look all spiffy for him. For those of you who have never met me in person here is a photo montage of me getting a haircut
As should be painfully obvious by now I pretty much have no hair on my head (still have plenty on my ass though, go me) after a fresh haircut. So we head off to the zoo, me with a freshly shorn head, and proceed to walk around the zoo for roughly the next 17 hours. Sunscreen of course never even crossed my mind nor did wearing a hat. I should also mention that this was near the start of the summer so I didn’t really have any base coat or anything going on either, I was pale little white boy who spends entirely too much time under the wonderful glow of my computer monitor.
I was not happy camper that night. After the zoo we went back to my brothers house and we were just hanging out there, had some dinner, watched a movie. By the time we were watching the movie I was already peeling off long sections of my scalp. It is kind of weird pulling your skin off your head especially when you consider that the skin you peel off has tons of little holes in it from where you hair grows out (mine didn’t have nearly as many holes as I would like though, stupid going bald shitfest head). By the time the movie was over I had probably peeled off 80% of the skin from the top of my head and my head was very sensitive and tingly. I asked if my brother had any aloe so I could spread some of its soothingly delicious goodness over my scorched dome but alas they didn’t have any.
After the movie I headed home hoping that I had some aloe. I drove home with the top down in my car which was a very strange sensation. The cool night air blowing over what remained of my scalp alternated from feeling very good, sort of like a dip in a nice cool pool after a hard day of working out in the sun to feeling like being gently poked repeatedly all over the head with an ice pick. I would go from pure bliss to ouch motherfucker several times in the span of seconds. Being the masochist that I am I kind of enjoyed the overall sensation.
When I finally arrived home I looked and looked for aloe but had no luck finding any, but I did find a bottle of suntan lotion that contained aloe. I figured it wouldn’t be as good as pure aloe but I imagined that it would be better than nothing. I was wrong. Very Wrong. The pain was incredible. Imagine, if you will, getting 500 paper cuts on your arm. Now imagine someone coming along and pouring salt, lemon juice and, just to be on the safe side, hot sauce all over your bloody paper cuts. Then to further your agony having gasoline thrown into your face, getting in your eyes and nose and then having it all lit on fire while a 4 year old kid repeatedly punches you in the goodies. That may give you an idea of the kind of pain that I experienced when I put that shit on my head.
In summary, don’t be an idiot douchebag and walk around in the sun with very sensitive exposed skin for many hours without protecting yourself. If you are an idiot like me, under no circumstances put sunscreen containing aloe on your charred skin thinking that it will ease the pain. You would seriously be better off pouring some sort of corrosive acid on yourself.
