Even Stepmoms Think You Should Wear Sunscreen

 

A little reminder I left taped to the bathroom mirror for my stepson Reilly when he attended dirtbike camp this summer. 

The child did not want to wear sunscreen.

He was twelve and he wanted a tan.

Now don’t get me wrong.  I shunned the sunscreen as well in the foolish and smooth skinned days of my youth.  I remember laying out in the backyard of my friend Heather’s house with nothing on but Def Leopard, a bikini, baby oil and reflecting pieces of tin foil.  If you had a slice of tomato and piece of lettuce you could of substituted me for cooked bacon and I would of made a wonderful BLT.

That was 1989.  In 2009 I sit here looking down at my sun damaged decolletage and think that my puckered skin would make a lovely pair of leather boots or in the right hands a nice handbag.  I tired to explain to both my stepsons that sunburns are damaging and so 8o’s, but as I look at my stepson’s neon shirts, all the classic Ray Ban sun glasses the kids are wearing, and the fact that my stepsons think Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is the coolest movie ever made (which I introduced them to) I realize the 80’s are in…again. 

Hella cool.  Dust off my leg warmers S.T.A.T.

What’s a Stepmom to do?  Preach “do as I say, not as I tanned?”

We are visiting the beach and the boys have been frequenting the ocean.  They come home each day and proudly display their red and tender skin.

“No sunscreen…that’s how we roll,” the boys proclaim.

Not on my watch!  That’s when I break out the aerosol spray aloe and 50 s.p.f. sunscreen and literally chase the boys around the house spraying sunscreen at their bodies as they dodge me and I screech out like every bit the crazed Stepmom I am…

“wear sunscreen, you’ll thank me when you are forty…wear sunscreen, you’ll thank me when you are forty.”

I don’t think I am having much affect on the boys choice to wear sunscreen and their ability to still get a tan.  I keep on trying though, even if  does remind me of growing up in the 80’s.

HOWEVER,  if Harrison comes home with a bad perm and Reilly bleaches Billy Idol into his jeans our days of blast from the 80’s past might be numbered. Once was enough.

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