My cousin, P, looked a bit tussled. She explained to us on the hotel patio that a German woman walked up to her and just pronounced her, "BLEES-TARD!" Bless her heart. P and B are sisters, and they and my dad would all compete to see who would be the darkest at the end of each summer. This was back in the day before tanning beds and skin cancer (or at least we didn't pay so much mind to the link between sun and skin cancer).
Maybe it's the Cherokee, but Dad and B would be as brown as a biscuit each summer. P would not be near as brown. And so it was that day as we were eating our fresh peach cobbler on our 4th of July vacation at Panama City Beach. P had gotten a bit red, but she certainly didn't have any blisters. Maybe the German woman meant that P had gotten burned?
I was also one of those people who would just turn brown as a child. You'd never know it now. After my short-lived goth phase as a teenager and my ensuing years doing cancer research, my skin is quite pale. Boop, as fair as she is (I still can't believe my offspring would have blonde hair and blue eyes!), seems to do okay in the sun. Of course, they use sunscreen on them in daycare, but as much as she's out, she's got a little tan going.
My issue now is more of poison ivy. Mercy, I've been dealing with it for several weeks now. I just went back to Urgent Care to get my 2nd round of steroids. Misery. Hopefully, this course will take care of it. But I'm a sad sight. Fortunately, I haven't ran into that same German lady who would call me out. I would really deserve the pronouncement, "BLEES-TARD!" You can see mounds of blisters on my skin. And I'm feeling it.
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