I gave my husband a bit of a surprise the other day when we
were driving through my “old neighborhood”.
When we drove past a pizza parlor I told him that used to be a tanning
salon where I went tanning. Many things
in that sentence don’t make sense if you knew me. Even when I was going to the tanning salon
there was a part of me that kept questioning my actions. My mother would bring me articles, almost
daily, on the dangers on tanning salons and yet, there I would go, twice a
week. When you live in the Pacific
Northwest sometimes you’ll do anything to look as though the sun shines here
more than it does, even acting like a rotisserie chicken.
Well, the days of my tanning booth visitations were many,
many years ago. Not only because I
finally got it through my head the extreme danger I was putting myself in from tanning
bed use, but also the fact that there are so many great self-tanning, or
tanning bed lotions available that it seems absolutely ridiculous to put yourself
in harms way when all you need to do use lotion to achieve a healthy glow.
Now that I am a mother I know that my actions speak volumes
so, when my girls heard me say that I used to go to a tanning salon, I had a
lot of explaining to do. Will they
believe me when I claim ‘Ignorant youth’?
Perhaps. I truly hope so. There is truth to the adage ‘With age comes
wisdom’ and I trust that my girls understood me when I told them about the
dangers of using a tanning bed and my poor choice. Self-tanning lotions are the next alternative
to achieving a glow. They say “Oregonian’s
don’t tan, they rust.” Well, this
Oregonian is hoping for the most pleasant shade she can find.