The new year starts tomorrow, and as a result, we spent the past week preparing for students’ arrival on campus. Wednesday was the big day. Hundreds of first-year students descended on campus as they moved into their residence halls.
Move-in is a big day on campus. Staff and faculty come together to help students unload their vehicles and cart their items to their rooms. For the big day, I spent hours driving a golf cart between the various halls, helping students and their families move in.
It was a lot of fun. Of course, I didn’t prepare quite as well as I had thought. Yeah, I wore shorts and a school t-shirt, but being that I was spending four hours in a covered golf cart, I didn’t think to put on a layer of sunscreen. At the end of my four-hour shift, as I hiked back over to my office, I noticed that my left leg, from mid-shin to mid-thigh was a violent shade of red. My right leg, from my knee to mid-shin was a bit pink. And my left forearm was a little sunburnt as well.
Now, I am no stranger to weird sunburns. I once went to a Royals game, which I spent leaned over with my elbows on my knees as I watched the game with interest. By the end of the game, my forearms and legs, minus two large circles where my knees had sat, were cherry red.
Not to mention, on multiple occasions, while wearing my hair in pigtails, I’ve gotten a nasty red stripe down the middle of my scalp. Of course, when it peels, it looks like a monster case of dandruff, which is very unpleasant, to say the least.
But nothing will ever top the sunburn I got back in 2004.
In May of 2004, I headed back to San Antonio to witness the graduation of one of my former students, GiWon. It was also an opportunity to catch up with friends and eat delicious food. I was pumped.
My mom came along on the trip, so we decided to take her car, a Pontiac Sunfire. It was a nice, comfortable car. But as we drove, the heat from the sunroof was oppressive. We had to blare the air conditioner to counter the hot, Southern sun beating down upon us.
I didn’t think anything of it, though. Until we stopped in Denton, Texas, at Rudy’s BBQ (the absolute best Texas barbecue joint, in my opinion). When I climbed out of the car, my mom’s eyes widened. I looked in the mirror, and what I saw still cracks me up to this day. The entire left side of my body – my face, neck, arm, and legs – was beet red. The sunroof had baked my poor skin for seven hours.
Walking into Rudy’s, everyone stopped and stared. Of course they did. I mean, I looked like a jester, only it was my skin with the harlequin pattern instead of my clothes. And it was a brutal sunburn.
When we arrived in San Antonio, we made a trip to the store so I could get some aloe vera, but it did nothing to temper the violent red of my skin. Even when I put on foundation, it failed to mask the color my inflamed skin. I spent the entire long weekend walking around with the entire population of San Antonio staring at me.
With time, the sunburn faded into a lopsided tan. I then spent the rest of summer trying to even out my skin tone. But I was so glad when I no longer looked like Lokai from Star Trek.
Mindy Kinnaman 