From Growing Up in Florida to This

I now live in Wisconsin which has about three and a half months of what could reasonably be described as warm weather. It's May 6, and it snowed a little earlier in the week. There was frost the other night. You get the picture. There is a very real reason public swimming pools don't open until Memorial Day. Anyway, I succumbed to the temptation and actually went to a tanning salon the other week. Something I swore I would never do. I was simply a pasty, sickly white. And I was tired of it, having lived in Florida until I was 22 during which time I was bronze surfer boy. I had it all except sun-bleached blonde hair. And even at my respectable age, I just couldn't take not having any color but hospital sheet white to my skin.

I then realized how tanning salons are the ultimate in 'get it now' culture. I spend more time undressing and redressing than I do under the lamps. When my high school friends would going 'sunning' it was an all day affair and all the lotions and you have to time your turn-overs and blah blah. Now, in and out in 10 minutes. And yes, I like how I look. Or is that the middle age in me talking?