Thursday 12 March 2015

Shit Happens – Getting Burned is a Bitch

Being olive skinned has its benefits.  I don’t usually look pasty in winter – I retain my healthy glow all year around; I get a really good tan very easily in summer and I very rarely burn.  As a matter of fact I could probably count on one hand the number of times I have been sunburned and it hasn’t gone brown overnight.  This equates to an unexpected pain induced horror fest that continues for up to a week after the fact and gets meaner and uglier every day during that period.  Let me relay my recent experience.

Day 1
I attended the Biennial Airshow at Avalon with Boy Wonder, Sister Farrah & her two girls. After a week of gorgeous weather, the night before the event, Mother Nature decides to wreak havoc in Melbourne with gale force winds that had my hair standing vertical whilst I was sitting in my living room with a window open.  She then unleashed the mother-load of rain and had Farrah & I distressed about the carpark quagmire that awaited us at Avalon.  The forecast was for a cloudy & overcast day with a slight chance of a morning shower.  I have a message for the Bureau of Meteorology…YOU LIE!  I would have a better chance of predicting the forecast based on the bend of a hair plucked out of my arse that these pricks!  I did not pack hats or Sunscreen but big sisters think of EVERYTHING…so we slopped on some sunscreen at least, just in case.

Avalon is an airport.  There are open fields and no trees so the wind whipped up in cyclonic proportions and a hat would have been ridiculous unless you tied the thing around your throat or suction cupped it to your head (only people with a balding pate should attempt the latter).  I tightly braided my hair so I wouldn’t spend half the day getting whipped to death and consuming it.  Coughing up a fur ball is nasty business. 

Over the course of the day we watched numerous people chasing their hats – even retrieved a few for our fellow spectators and we congratulated ourselves on the no hat decision.  Now I wish I had stapled a hat to my frigging head – the sun came out and dried up all the rain and the hot wind burned the bejesus out of my head!  The wind blew against my head so much that I ended up with a furry aura surrounding my tight braid – and by the time I got home, I looked like Clive the orangutan in the movie ‘Every Which Way But Loose”.  My lips were stinging slightly and my forehead felt tight – not so bad.

Day 2
I turn on the faucets, step into the shower…and scream like a stuck pig!  Holy shit!  My forehead feels like someone has just branded it with an iron and my scalp is on fire.  My lips feel tight and sore and my eyebrows have made their presence known.  I quickly complete my ablutions, step out of the shower and ever so gently dab myself dry, emitting little ‘eeps’ and ‘oohs’ as I dabbed at my tender skin.  I then go and stand before the mirror to assess the damage.  Holy Mother of Murgatroyd!  My forehead is indeed red, so red in fact that it looks purple and makes my grey roots stand out like dog’s balls.  I solemnly declare that I will be rectifying the issue with my roots when I get home from work that afternoon and hope my boss and colleagues don’t notice the skunk like ugliness.  My eyebrows look fine but they sit atop an angry strip of ouch and my nose looks like a red beacon glowing loudly in the middle of my face.  I have a very large white area where my sunglasses sat.  My lips are dry and very sore but show no colour – they hurt enough to be purple too but remain unremarkable in colour.  I look like I have a red priest’s collar around my neck.  Where the fuck did that bit come from I wonder?  Although not really badly burned, my legs have enough colour between where my shorts ended and my socks began that I look like I am wearing red leg-warmers. I am fetching indeed.  Boy Wonder screams upstairs as the shower jets hit his burned neck (he has a burned bit of skin about a hand-span wide on the side of his neck).  I think my big boof-head shielded him most of the day.  I don’t think he will peel – his face has gone very brown.  I am very envious at this point and uncharitably mumble “lucky bastard” under my breath.

We have a staff meeting at work and everyone is in the office, nobody is absent and everybody notices.  My tight red face endures comparisons with a monkey’s arse in heat.  The woman who owns the cafĂ© on the corner mentions my roots.  I smile tightly and swallow the urge to yell an expletive at her.  Back at the office I add insult to injury by giving myself a paper cut across the chin (don’t ask how – I am gifted in all things stupid – stupid is as stupid does and this stupid does it a lot).  Now I have an angry red horizontal line running across my chin – I look like a South Park character.  I kill the urge to scream ‘Kick the baby!” to my colleagues.  My day is not improving.

I cannot show any expression without hurting.  Surprise, frown, smile, laugh (just give me a reason) – they all hurt.  Applying makeup and brushing my hair makes me want scream…seeing my reflections makes me want to cry.

I exchange several text messages with my niece, who shares the same fate, and we make ourselves feel better by taking the piss out of our burned heads.  She makes me laugh and it hurts so badly that I want to slap a granny – I am feeling irrational.  Windburn turns me into a bitch.  I make it through the day without venting.

Day 3
It is like “Groundhog Day”.  Why is it still so fucking sore?  It has been days and my tolerance is limited.  Last night I nuked my scalp with hair colour to irradicate the skunk hairline and today it is burning like I set it alight.  I would not recommend allowing vanity to supersede the realms of normalcy – I should have waited…normal people would have waited.  My head is a giant ball of ouch. 

My face, eyebrows and scalp are starting to itch like a bastard but if I touch them, I scream.  I am applying Aloe Vera by the bucket load and look perpetually wet and shiny.  I really don’t want to peel but the constant itch tells me it is a given.  People around me are still verbalizing their observations, like I have no idea my face is a monkey’s arse – I’m just walking around oblivious and should be grateful that they are pointing it out.  

Boy Wonder awoke to an even darker tan and a hand span of tan on his neck.  Everyone at school asked him how the hell he got such a tan on the weekend – he’s one of the lucky ones.  I wish I had tan instead of this tight red ball of fugly.

Day 4
Finally, it doesn’t hurt anymore but the itch has stepped up to insane.  I am constantly scratching like I have an infestation of head lice and skin allergies (I just scratched my head at the mere mention of head lice…shudder).  I am deriving so much pleasure from scratching that I have the expression of a dog licking its balls with every scratch, and have to remind myself to stop scratching lest I suddenly climax at my desk.

I check my look in the mirror at lunch time and I am alarmed to see the skin on my forehead looks like dark crepe paper and when I touch it…it rustles like a dead leaf.  The skin has lifted and is wrinkled.  When did that happen?  I dare not scratch – imagine how it will look when it peels.  I look like a tribal elder – my skin dark, shriveled, leathery and mummified.  If the lid was lifted on a sarcophagus and this head was inside, no one would bat an eyelid.  My collar has gone brown but will not peel; it looks stupid.  The legwarmers won’t peel either, they too look stupid.  There are flakes in my eyebrows and I am disgusted with my appearance.

Day 5
Today I belong to the apache tribe.  I look so frigging ridiculous.  Overnight, my forehead and nose started to peel and I awoke to discover the evidence flaked all over my pillow.  I am disgusted with the dried up bits of dead skin and even though I know it is just my shedding skin, this results in my stomach roiling and my bottom jaw shudders.  

I walk into the office and immediately someone points and laughs.  The skin underneath is as pink and a new born baby’s arse and when surrounded by patches of dark brown dried up dead skin, looks hideous.  I have brown patches of skin that are not loose and will not peel and look a lot like pigmentation.  This look is fugly to the power of fugly.  My head is still itching and flaking skin is floating down all around me like dandruff.  I recall a similar situation in the 90s where my bikini line got sunburned and when it peeled, I had flakes of skin falling out from under my skirt.  This was back in the days where women sported full pubic afros so it did look a lot like I had dandruff inside my knickers.  That was wrong town.

I feel horror that this is happening to me and cannot wait for this week to end so I no longer need to endure this daily tedium.  I return home and despite all the advice about caring for burned skin, I wet a cloth and scrub the entire forehead, nose and eyebrow area; exfoliating all the dead skin away.   I am left with a very pink and glowing complexion, but no longer look like I belong in a museum.

Day 6
I enter the office to what almost seems like applause.  Everyone who has been noticing (and vocalising) the changes on the canvas of my face, see that the artwork is complete now and my head is back to resembling the bag of shit it did before I baked it silly the weekend prior.  When the Airshow returns in 2017, I will wear the headgear of a beekeeper and save myself the angst, pain and humiliation of hard baking my nut!



Doona