When I was a child sun burn was nothing to be afraid of: a little bit of pain for a few days and you were set for the rest of summer. In fact my personal strategy was to deliberately get burned on the very first day of arriving at the beach for the summer holidays.
Once you got over the peeling of skin you had no need for sunscreen; that horrible greasy stuff that you really only used if you wanted a “Healthy Sun Tan” over time and not an instant one like me. Besides amongst the kids in the camping ground it was almost a competition to see who got rid of their pealed skin.
Of course there were all the home remedies for taking the initial pain out of the sun burn. There was the half tomato rubbed over the skin; the petroleum jelly rubbed into the skin; or the tea leaves or the tea itself. There must have been a million home recipes but of course none of them really worked, though nobody was going to admit to that.
If you were really tough, then you just braved it. If you got really bad there were always the professionally prepared lotions. In my experience though none of them really worked either but you can’t blame someone for making a profit.
It turns out of course the sun is way more dangerous than anybody knew back then and now it’s even worse; especially here in Australia and in New Zealand with there still being, that which is essentially a hole in the Ozone layer.
I have been very lucky or is it the grace of God that I have never, so far suffered from skin cancer given the abuse that I gave my skin back then; though I didn’t know it was abuse. It’s a good thing that wearing sunglasses back then was cool or we’d have a lot more eye cancers now; even though they were not always the correct sort.
Don’t suffer the pain of sun burn; you or your children. Were sunscreen wear sun glasses and buy your kids UV suits.
Enjoy (but not the sunburn)
Richard
Richard
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