SPF...WTF?

Summer is officially here in little old Lovetown. We escaped the humidity yesterday with our first swim at our community pool.

We are, like most 21st century bourgeois parents, slaves to sunscreen around here. We’ve got it all: the sticks, the tubes, the sprays. With my non-cooperative little heathens, I generally find the whole process to be an exercise in frustration. Messy, time-consuming and, of course, thankless. Must admit that patience has never been my greatest virtue. (Hmmm…what, I wonder, is my greatest virtue? Do I even have one?). Anyway, just another one of those obligatory tasks I dread but faithfully execute.

On top of this, we have an additional issue here at the funny farm. The iron in our well water interacts in the washing machine with the sunscreen that has rubbed off on our clothes. Turns everything orange. The ideal solution would be an expensive filtration system, but until that materializes, I’ve been just been avoiding buying light colored clothing as much as possible.

I’ve been thinking of experimenting with some of the natural products available at the health food store to see if we can eliminate the laundry problem. I’m ashamed to say, I usually just buy the industrial stuff available at Target, although I do worry about putting all those chemicals on my kids’ skin. The organic ones tend to cost a fortune, though, and we go through them pretty fast.

I do occasionally let the kids out for short stretches without sunscreen at the suggestion of a holistic-minded family physician I once met who contends that the benefits Vitamin D straight from the source outweigh the dangers of a little UV exposure. But for the most part, we toe the line. My mother (one of those outdoorsy, tennis-playing senior citizens) has had numerous basal cells removed. I’ve had a couple of bad burns in my ignorant sun worshipping days and would like to ward off skin cancer as long as possible. We went to Florida last spring and I was so conscientious about the SPF that I was just as embarrassingly white after a week on the beach as I was when I first got off the plane. There were a couple of leather skinned sea hags whom we saw on the beach every day during that trip: sunning, smoking and drinking Diet Pepsis. I remember being kind of revolted at the time, but looking back, I suppose there is really nothing wrong with a couple of good old gals exercising their right to fry.