Parting Shot
Sunburns & Garage Sales
By Colin Perkins |
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After all these years of human civilization, we really don't have a better sunburn treatment than "lay a damp cloth across the affected area?"
Billions of dollars in medical research and an untold number of hours spent in labs by men with white coats and beakers and test tubes and hilarious chimps being used as guinea pigs - and all we've come up with is "lay a damp cloth across the affected area?"
You've got to be shitting me.
You've failed me, medical research community. Just like you did with my $800-a-month narcolepsy medication and in the way my beloved 5-Hour Energy - if I'm being brutally honest with myself - really only lasts about three.
As it seems that the medical community is "focusing on real ailments" and doesn't have time to "help stupid people that don't help themselves in even the most basic of ways," I turn to the Internet.
Surely the Internet will have an answer. After all, we've managed to harness and record the collective knowledge of the world and serve it up with instant 24-hour access. There must be a holistic earthy nut job with a blog that can offer up a great soy-based solution to what is now the fourth time I've sun-scorched the better part of my entire body - and lived to swear it'll never happen again1. And you'd have to believe that some person living in the hills of Arkansas has cooked up some great soothing bathtub ointment, right2?
You would think so. But you would be wrong, my friend, because once again an exhaustive search of the interweb quickly proves that we aren't nearly as evolved as we think we are. This idea really hit home when I realized that Googling "sunburn" in certain ways still gets you porn. Really people? Really?
You are no doubt thinking that I myself am to blame for this. After all, I was the one traipsing around the golf course3 for four-plus hours in the summer sun. That is a valid and fair argument to which I would say: my public school education failed me. Never once was I told not to be out in the sun for hour upon hour during the hottest part of the day. I mean, that's not the type of thing you just know. Sure, there was that really terrible graduation-themed song about this very thing a few years back4, but that wasn't my graduation year. Mine was the year of Green Day wishing that I'd have the time of my life. So, that I did - and we see where that's gotten me.
The biggest tragedy of this entire scenario is that because of the utter lack of innovation by the lazyass sunburn-studying scientists of the world, I'm destined for an entire weekend as a shut-in - three long days trapped indoors like some weird Howard Hughes or Boo Radley5 that hates delicious cookouts, baseball games, golf courses and general summer frivolity.
What hurts the most, though, will be missing the community garage sale I look forward to all year. My mother lives in quite the hoity-toity, hob-knobby little neighborhood and every year they hold this massive community junk swap, which is so much more valuable for the fascinating display of human nature it displays than for the "great deals" that are largely absent.
Garage sales, like sunburns, seem to be a summer staple - but I don't really get it. They've always seemed like a somewhat presumptuous and self-important idea - on the part of the seller and buyer. On one side you've got a family that has decided that this pile of crap is no longer even worth holding onto. But, rather than simply throwing away their old Sega Genesis6 games and their basket full of Happy Meal toys7 and the 18 assorted Tupperware lids with no containers8, they decide that this garbage, while not good enough for them, will gladly be purchased by other people. Those poor people would be lucky to own our trash.
The entire thing reminds me of the late, great George Carlin's famous routine on stuff:
That's all your house is: a place to keep your stuff. If you didn't have so much stuff, you wouldn't need a house. You could just walk around all the time. A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it.
On the other side of the equation, you have the buyer, many of whom have watched one too many episodes of Antiques Roadshow9 and are fully expecting to pay a few measly dollars to some moron that's unknowingly unloading an original copy of the Declaration of Independence hidden in the frame of some cheap watercolor of a sailboat. Most of the time, however, they just leave thinking, "Man, those people own some real crap."
Or as Carlin put it:
Have you noticed that their stuff is shit and your shit is stuff?
In all my years of visiting garage sales, I don't think I've ever bought anything. So, me and my Chapped Dermis10 are going to sit this year out. But if any of you readers do head out looking for deals, and you spot - amongst the out-of-fashion clothing, the old, dirty plates and flat volleyballs - a box with a random assortment of old washcloths selling for a dime or so a piece, please grab me a handful. Because right now, I could really use some cutting edge medical treatment.
1 I once spent several hours in a pool at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas with the temperature hovering right around 115-degrees before realizing I'd forgotten to apply sunscreen to the all-important shoulder region. Thereafter, my friends, being the ever-supportive lot they are, spent the rest of the trip punctuating every $5 roulette victory and $1.50 slot machine bonanza with a good-natured congratulatory slap on the shoulder.
2 In my mind, Arkansas bathtubs are used far more often for cooking up hooch and medicine than for their actual intended use.
3 Sunk a 20-foot putt for a birdie two on a 156-yard par three. No big deal.
4 Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)
5 Boo Radley is the guy in To Kill A Mockingbird who stays inside all day because he is agoraphobic, or was mutilated in a fire or something like that. I don't remember. Again, failed by public school education.
6 Mega Man 3
7 The Monsters, Inc. toys are especially affordable because one of them passed through the dog's body and came out the other end.
8 $1.00 OBO
9 Is that possible?
10 Great name for an indie rock band.
Originally Published: July 1, 2010
