Even though I just wrote about skin tones and summer skin care for my son who is bi-racial with African American features we still managed to mess up on vacation. George did not think he would sunburn so whenever I gave him the sunscreen he said he was putting it on himself. I made sure everyone had all the sunscreen they needed. George thought it was funny that I was asking him to put it on because as he put it “I’m brown I will not burn”.
As part of our family vacation we went tubing down the Comal River in Texas. George thought it was so funny that we were carrying sunscreen with us down the river considering we just put it on before we got out of the car. Now just a word to the wise if you are going to go tubing make sure that you not only put screen on when you are standing but also when you are sitting. Now I know you are thinking that is a bit silly but trust me there is about 5 inches of difference between knee length shorts and where your shorts rest when you are in a tube. Out of the five members of my family four of us had lobster red burns where our shorts were covering.
Now George being the funny little thing he is thought it was hysterical what we all had matching bright red bands across our legs, all of us except for him. I told him that he got some color as well, he did not turn red he turned dark brown so instead of having a red band he was darker there than anywhere else on him. Although his skin tone had not turned red and hurt like us he got darker but he just did not feel like he was burnt; that is until we went fishing off the coast.
Have you ever tried to tell a 10 year old boy anything that he just won’t believe? We kept telling him he would start to burn and he laughed and said nope just getting a tan. Every day we put the sun screen on a few times a day and then aloe on at night except for George. When we went fishing for four hours and when we got up the next morning he was begging for aloe. He just could not believe or understand how he was not red like us but was feeling the burn like us. He should learn to listen to me!