#181. or, I'm Pre-tanning

  I've started tanning again this year.

  Some of you know I do this, and yes, I've read the giant poster on the wall of the Health Unit that says 10 minutes of tanning can cause cancer, unrepairable skin damage, as well as the early onset of death. But so can trying to lobotomise yourself with a fork because you're about to go insane from not having seen the sun in two and a half weeks. And the death part might not in fact be accurate, because frankly, I didn't get to the end of the poster because my mind wandered off when I got to the picture of the beach. But there you have it, for better or worse, I'm tanning.

  The first reason I'm doing this, is for vacation camouflage. Because I'm going to look bad enough as it is with my shirt off, when we go to Cuba at the end of the month. Having a little colour before that happens, I'm hoping, will prevent me from being the poster boy for pasty white Canadians, when I'm strutting my topless, man-sexiness, around the pool. And by topless man-sexiness, I of course mean saggy old guy torso.

  The second reason, and more importantly, is I tend to burn quite easily in the tropical sun, or any sun for that matter, aside from any exposed skin on my arms below my t-shirt sleeve level. So inevitably, I end up shedding off layers of skin like a snake. And I have this vision in my head of those crafty Cubans creating an army of Ken-inatractor clones, from my discarded DNA, and scattering them across the countryside to perform menial farm tasks for little or no pay. If the world needs anything, it's less of me rendering in the Cuban sun.

 But any ways, the tanning. When I've tanned in the past, I have always used a stand-up booth. I've had friends tell me how relaxing it is, lounging away your allotted minutes, casually laying on a tanning bed model, but I think I still prefer to be irradiated while standing. However, due to a change of ownership at the place I used to do my tanning, there is no longer a stand up model available to use in our town. For the reasons above,  I decided I would give the lay-down model a go, because I have an open mind to try new things, and  really, there was no other option.

  Now, I've heard of prodigies who sit down at a piano for the first time in their lives, and are able to have grand masterpieces of music flow miraculously from their fingertips. Or how evolution has granted certain desert tribes-people with the ability to run endlessly without tiring, in order to be able to cover the ground required to feed their families. I've always wished that I had some sort of untapped innate ability, hiding just under the surface of who I am, waiting to break free and reveal itself at precisely the right moment.

  Unfortunately, my special hidden talent seems to be that I have the perfect storm of excess flab and back sweat to suction myself to the plastic base of a lay-down tanning bed and make horrific farting noises whenever I try to change my position.

  Every time it happens I imagine that across town, at the Spring Sun Restaurant, a group of people are roused from their Combo #2, by a far off and distant rumble.

  Needless to say, my tanning is anything but relaxing.

   On the plus side, I'm up to about 6 minutes at holding my back off the bed with my heels and shoulders, so I'm assuming there's some core strengthening happening.

   ..........I guess that's better than nothing?