Sun Poisoning

A few years ago I went for a weekend to the beach far far away from where I lived. I wanted to get a tan (because I'm so frigging white!). All the good shade was taken when we arrived to the beach, so we had to settle to shade under a huge parasol and also brave the scorching sun. Someone said that Cabo Rojo is one of those beaches in which you can get burned easily. I didn't understand, was the beach closer to the sun? Or was there something in the water? So I just shrugged those comments off and laid on the sand with a towel over my face. I could feel the glorious heat caving into my skin, it actually felt good. I could feel tthe bright sun everywhere weighing down. I turned over and did my back too. I ignored random comments and/or advice: "you shouldn't bake for that long, Joel". And then, ten or fifteen minutes later of relaxed sunbaking (suntanning, whatever) I got up and went into the water. But then, afternoon came and the time to go back to the hostel. My skin started to tighten on the shoulders, arms, back and chest. By the time I went to take a shower to wash off the salt water I was blazing like a motherfucking bonfire. I couldn't move. The water from the shower was felt like a thousand fat needles. My skin was lobster red, and it was as hard as a lobster shell is. It smelled like roasted chicken, and if you touched it also felt like hardened roasted chicken skin. It was awful. Dreadful. Uber painful. The next day I started to get hugeamongous pustules which reminded me of when the Gremlims touched water. The pustules would break and bleed their puss and then burn because it was open skin. Waking up and getting up from bed was tedious, because the clothes gets stuck on these pustules and on the burnt skin in general... I had to peal it off, it felt as if I was grating myself. I went to the doctor and he prescribed: gatorade (for hydration), solarcaine and cold aloe vera... the rest was up to my skin and to my will to endure.... I swore not to let that happen again. That's why I'm still so frigging white!

Another sun poisoning story, didn't happen to me, but to one of my roommates in Orlando. It was the third or forth week there in the new appartment, when we realized that he had been gone for a couple of days. Until one night there is a knock on the door (maybe I'm fictionalizing this) and there he was, red-skinned and miserable. (Actually, we roommates got back from work and found him lying almost dead on the bed with his face all red, but the door scenes sounded more fascinating). So we found him on the bed, and he slowly took his covers off and we saw his chest, which was super white before, was like a lighted piece of coal. His legs were so burnt that he couldn't set his foot on the floor in the proper manner. It was painful to see. He could barely walk. And because he was so thin, he looked very very ill. We helped him though, we were good roommates. A week later he was almost back into his own skin and goofing around all over.

So, why am I telling these stories? Well, because I saw THIS Family guy episode:

You're haunting this house with your whiteness, Brian.