Relentless sunshine, every day, everywhere I turn. Not a proper sentence, that last one, but I don't care. While the rest of humanity (above the equator) frolics in the August outdoors, I'm stuck inside, dreaming of the arrival of the blessed equinox to formally announce the end of hell and the beginning of autumn.
Ah, autumn (forgive the exclamation point)! It's the time of year when wicked, glaring old Sol lowers his blaze to a lemony wash; the season when the foliage matches my own. Autumn sounds the twinkling onset of short (thank you jebus!) days, crisp appley (appleish?) air and long sleeves that don't cause passersby to wonder about my sanity in the noonday sun.
I love sailing. I'm not especially good at it, but I've done lots of it on both coasts. However, summer sailing is a misery. While all the barefoot, nut-brown sailor boys and girls, donning their Hawaiian print short shorts and tank tops, cavort (bareheaded!) on deck, I'm reduced either to cowering in the heat of the cabin below or covering myself entirely in a man's white shirt and a straw hat with a brim the size of a jumbo pizza pie.
It sucks.
It's not just sunburn and chapped lips. No. Because we redheads are designed to produce tons of vitamin D with next to no sun exposure, we become ill from too much of the goddamned stuff. Too many units of it in the course of a day can kill us. Seriously: we're talkin' dead redheads. Global warming, obviously, is a huge issue to us. It's personal.
But come September (Damn, I love months that end with -ember. Or even -ary. They just have a refreshing ring to them, no?), I'll remove the economy sized tube of SPF 70 from my purse and walk the streets and sail the rivers quite naked. Well, not quite naked; but when everyone else covers up, redheads get to show their stuff. And highly attractive and brightly colored stuff it is, in my opinion, thank you very much.
Sadly, black- and brown-skinned folks (bastards) only absorb a tiny bit of potential-killer vitamin D from the sun; otherwise, it would kill them, too, with all their equatorial, half-naked, mahogany and olive skin on display all summer long. Come winter, the nut-browns suffer from vitamin D deficiency, which can also kill a person, whilst my clan gets more than enough of the stuff during the first five minutes of a drizzly Oregon winter's morning.
Tough. I won't pity them in the least; not one bit.
Let them eat supplements.
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3 comments:
Very hilarious, I enjoyed your writing. I to am a September person. I love the fall. I boat not, sail. It's a Navy thing. Oh, and I'm a Brown Coat if you know what that is. Has nothing to do with my skin. Welcome to blog land. You keep writing like that, you will do fine. See ya!
welcome to blogland? you're a fine fellow, SR.
a brown coat?
[confession: i've been a pro writer for many (many) years, as the DIW folks know, and also have blogs all over the place; but, like any writer, i always loves the praise. a thousand thanks to you, and happy boating come september!]
Yeah, its a title from given to renagade rebels of society from the FireFly series. It's also a name of the fans of that same said series. I fell in love with Josh Whedons writing from that series. Oh, and keep writing, I would love to hear more from you. Please stop by my blog and let me know what you think of my stories. Thanks in advance.
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