The Sunburn Anecdote

 

I’ve been a bit of a mess lately. I’ve been in good spirits, actually, but I think my brain has decided vacation has arrived (no vacation in sight) and is really enjoying kicking back. The other morning I woke up with only one earring in. I looked everywhere, scoured the office, called shops I’d been in, the whole shebang, and I was forced to come to terms with the fact that it was just gone.

But then I found it! Very early yesterday morning I decided to check the shower again, and as I pushed in the door I peeked around it and lo and behold there was my earring, a frighteningly small distance from the drain. Needless to say I was overjoyed and went about getting ready with a spring in my step.

I needed to leave the house quite early to meet up with a coworker at a golf club. Now erase that image of me as an old white guy, and replace it with this: the nonprofit I volunteer with is organizing a golf tournament fundraiser with this club, and we need to take it in shifts to be present and recruit players to sign up. I happily told my coworker that I found my earring (hallelujah) and we set up our stand in the sun because we were cold.

Then the wind happened. I had a cup of orange juice on our table, and the wind knocked down our poster, which knocked down my juice and spilled it all over our materials. Oops. Also the cup broke.

Now I have a tale to tell about a man named Richard (so fitting for the setting it’s actually ridiculous). Richard is a bit creepy. Is creepy the right word? Maybe we’ll call him pervy. The first time we met on the course he called me pretty, which is fine (ish) unto itself except then he made a joke about how my grandmother is probably too young for him and how funny is it that he still falls in love with girls like me? I’m barely 19. Yeah. So that’s Richard. We talked about atheism and his grandchildren (no relation between the two subjects).

I saw Richard again yesterday and while my coworker was busy being amused by our conversation Richard told me I have to take better care of my skin. I ignored this comment as another “old man talking to young girl about preserving good looks” comment, but when I left the club I discovered he deserves more credit than I gave him…

I kind of burnt off my neck. It’s kind of a highlighter pink hue, it’s extremely pissed off and it is going to express it’s rage for the forseeable future. Sorry, Richard. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you.

Now the thing about sunburns isn’t just how painful they are. Whenever I see the red skin in the mirror I get angry. I mainly get angry at myself for not taking better care of myself, but I also get angry at the sun and at random people around me. It turns me into a bit of a witch. Bye-bye, good mood.

On my way to the office I stopped to gas up the car and pulled into my regular lane. The guy working there (we’ll call him Gus cause I’m lazy and Gus seems like a good name for him) smiled a cocky smile and motioned for to me to move to the lane over. I was like, “Sorry buddy, but the cap is on this side. I know what I’m doing.” But Gus kept smiling and kept motioning, so finally I pulled into the other lane and lowered my window. “The station there is out of order,” says our chummy little Gus. “Turn around and come to this one in the opposite direction.”

Okay, maybe his words don’t sound condescending here, but it was the way he delivered them. So I turn around and pull up, tell him what the car needs and he just stands there smiling. What, Gus? What do you want from me? He just keeps standing there. Eventually he says, “You need to open it for me.”

I felt like squishing his face. I’d had enough of misogynistic men for the day and he was just looking at me like, “Look at the silly little girl who doesn’t know what she’s doing”.

Let me tell you something, Gus: I’m doing more with my life right now than you will ever do with yours, so get off your high horse and treat me with the respect I deserve.

So I got to the office, completed my entire to-do list (!!!) and grabbed something we needed to exchange at the mall. Where I encountered an idiot. The day was really just not going well. The trainee at this store, who refused to call her superior, had a lot of difficulty figuring out what to do with my receipt. Twenty minutes later (I’m not exaggerating, I timed it) she told me I needed to pay the difference between the two products, which came out to 176 (local currency). Now listen, honey, I don’t know if you have any sort of education, but the difference was 30. 30! Not 176. Another ten minutes later (half an hour out the window) the superior finally shows up and go figure, the difference, when calculated correctly, is 30. Thank you very much, good bye.

My level of frustration with humanity was pretty high at this point. This entire time I was feeling extremely self-conscious of my angry red skin and suffering immensely from the pain. I could fry an egg on the back of my neck. Lovely times.

Later that night I also broke my sister’s very expensive glass bottle of skin care something-or-other because I was trying to get my top on without touching my skin. She was mad. Sorry.

So I reiterate, I’m a mess. But at least you got a lengthy rant like the good old times! It’s been a while since I’ve had to write something like this. Good thing or bad thing? By the way, this blog just turned 3 years old! I still have a little notebook where I recorded the first like! And the first follow! And the first reblog! I tried to keep track of when I hit milestones, like 10 followers, 100… Little did I know I would go on to celebrate 1,000 and 2,500 and now we’re at 3,600! Craziness. Thank you for all the love.

~~~

Ella

Song Quote:

It’s a wonder at all that I survived. –This Is War, Ingrid Michaelson

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