Monday, March 10, 2008

Bronzed Goddess



I went tanning today for the first time since high school. As I’m a woman of habit I went to the exact same tanning place I went to whilst in high school. The woman who owned it then was still there. I asked for a 30 minute bed & she giggled coquettishly (no small feat when you’re pushing 50 & looking like you’ve wintered in Florida for the past 25 years). She answered “We haven’t had the 30 minute beds here in 14 years.” Well excuse me that I haven’t been here since the sun became youth’s enemy. She suggested I take a “turbo bed’ as I was in a hurry. This involves an extra strong blast of UV changing your skin colour in about 4 minutes. Since I’m one shade darker than Nicole Kidman in The Hours, I opted for a 10 minute lie down bed. I got naked & lay down in the bed, as usual pretending I’m Ripley climbing in my little pod to drift through space.

There were 3 things i used to do while tanning. 1) pick the zits on my arms, 2) fantasize about my economics teacher, and 3) glance down & analyze my naked body which from that angle is actually pretty flattering.

It gave me a bit of a time (10 minutes) to reflect on the woman I am & the girl I was. Same place, same room. My friends & I used to run there in our kilts (Catholic school girls) during spare to bronze our skin so our hair looked blonder. Today I ran in after dropping off dry cleaning in an attempt to stave off mid-winter depression.

Anyway, what I got from all this wallowing in the past was this: I’m fatter.
I also burnt my ass.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I adore tanning beds!! Last time I went was in 2004...after a break of about 4 years and I got the same reaction from the girls working. A LAY DOWN bed? For 20 minutes?? Bahahaha! Nope, they put me in a stand up bed for 4 minutes and I was cooking - smoking even - afterwards.

I wanna go back :)