It's that time of year again—flowers are blooming, birds are singing, the sun is shining. Which means parents everywhere can look forward to attempting to slather a wildly kicking, screaming beast in a thick coat of white goo every time you want to step outdoors.
Yes, I am talking about applying sunscreen to the children. The thought of having to do it makes me want to pack us up and move us to a polar circle. (I'm not sure which one, but probably the one that has WiFi and Chipotle.)
Being a fair-skinned lady, I take my sun protection seriously. "Tan" is not in my vocabulary. I'm either white or red.
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While my 3-year-old daughter takes on a golden French-fry color in the summer, her albino-esque twin brother is just like me, which means I can't skimp on the SPF.
The plan for myself is pretty straightforward: SPF 50 or higher, a wide-brimmed hat or visor and sunglasses. When I walk the streets of Brooklyn, I try to find patches of shade wherever possible.
Simple. Effective. Done.
Getting the kids to wear sunscreen is a whole other matter. When they see me coming with the bottle, they sprint away from me so fast you'd think they were contestants in the Hunger Games. When I finally catch them, and I always do, they scream bloody murder as I attempt to coat all visible patches of skin in a concoction of unpronounceable chemicals so that they won't die of skin cancer or end up looking like a cast member of "Sunset Tan." By the time I'm done, their eyes are tearing, their clothes are stained, I'm crying and we are all ready to go outside and have a great time.
The only thing worse than applying sunscreen to kids is shopping for it. The choices are too overwhelming. A recent visit to the drugstore presented a plethora of options that were virtually indistinguishable from one another. How was I supposed to know which one to get? There was baby sunscreen, kids sunscreen and something called ultra-kids, which claimed to offer anti-aging properties. I want to keep my kids young-looking, so I definitely considered that one. Then there were the sprays, presumably made for those lazy, hands-off parents who don't enjoy spreading cream into the tiny folds of their toddler's arms and necks.
I recently read an article that said you should be using a lot more sunscreen than you think— one application should be the amount you can fill a shot glass with. Wanting to be a good mom, I took my shot glasses out of the cabinet. Seven hours later, I woke up on the kitchen floor grasping an empty bottle of José Cuervo and the hand of a strange man named Jim.
The whole experience made me long for the days when I was a kid and sun protection was much simpler. Growing up on Long Island in the '80s, before we went outside to play, our parents would hand us a bottle of baby oil and a sun reflector. We'd set out to find the hood of a hot car to sit on.
Simple. Damaging. Done.
I am just going to go out there and say it: I think God effed up on skin. I mean, shouldn't it be self-protecting and not require an expensive bottle of goo just to keep from frying outside?
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But since I don't want us to get skin cancer or freckles (shudder), I guess I'll keep buying and applying the stuff.
Maybe one day I'll even clean out my shot glasses.
Image via Jacobs Stock Photography
