My 15 minutes in the sun

Averaging the sun exposure by spending an hour upside down.

When I was a kid and fifteen minutes felt like the day-after-never from now, I was pretty spotty in my sunscreen usage. It’s not that my parents or I were particularly negligent, but almost no one thought that the warming rays of the sun were anything but bliss. We would go to the ocean on vacation and it was nearly a foregone conclusion that everyone would end up with a nice, toasty sunburn with the peeling skin to be a much awaited conclusion to the suffering.
Now, just open any womens’ (or, increasingly, mens’) magazine and you might be forgiven for thinking that ‘sun damage’ is the world’s worst problem since nuclear weapon proliferation. There is SPF 70 chapstick, an unexaggerated five types of sunscreen appropriate to wear at any given moment, and probably even sun-blocking underarm deodorant. Slip, slop, slap became obsess, obsess, obsess and now I am afraid to be at the beach!

Our friends hunt for 6 foot long sandworms with these discarded shark carcasses. But, safety first! Remember to wear your long pants, long sleeves, wide brim hats or balaclavas and half gloves!

This brings me to my main point. I don’t know what to do at the ocean anymore. I am in Australia, a country with what seems like ten miles of beach per citizen, and so this dilemma is not exactly a trivial matter. A day’s group discussions might be titled something like: “do we eat breakfast at our beachside campsite now, or after surfing?”

Seriously, I am at the beach a lot. The other day I decided that since I have been living on the beach for so many months, I can’t properly say ‘I am from the US’ for now. Like a haiku that defined a life in it’s simple essence, I would have to say: I am from the beach, I skip the tides. I watch to sea, I eat the sand.

But this little slice of zen goes nowhere in addressing how often reapplications of ULTRA DEFENCE WATEPROOF SPF 40 sunblock should occur. And just how paranoid should I be about the risks to an unprotected arm experiencing withering blasts of UVB radiation while walking to the toilet?

In short: What do we do at the beach now?

Among other things, we sometimes use beach junk to erect shade structures.

We arrive at the beach and instead of bouncing from the seat and running headlong into the pounding surf with just my boardshorts, I have to consider, plan and pack mainly keeping in mind the sun. Is there a free tree to go under for shade, or do I need to bring an umbrella? Do I need waterproof sunscreen, or do I use the cheaper stuff that comes off in the water? And should I put that sunblock on here and further delay the beckoning beach, or be exposed unprotected for ten minutes to the sun, god forbid.

I want to go body boarding, but I have to think, ‘has it been at least fifteen minutes since I put on my sunblock yet?’ And if I do go into the water, how long should I stay in until I scamper back to the shade to re-apply? After all, everyone knows that waterproof sunblock never is, right?

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