Today was a beautiful afternoon and I decided to sit outside in the sun during my break. It was a great day for getting a tan. I don’t bother trying to tan because I don’t feel like adding ten more years to my skin's age in one afternoon of self inflicted first degree burns over a very large percentage of my body. Percentage can be just as important as severity, the more body area that is covered with burns, the less the degree of the burn matters. So, sun tanning has the potential to cause as much damage as a small third degree burn.

Yet we do this to ourselves, summer after summer. I haven't purposely tanned since the summer that I turned 19. It was my first year living in California and I was with child at the time. And before the summer was over, I gave up my tanning sessions with the other housewives in the complex.

But, when I was still tanning, I was the only idiot who jumped in the pool really early that summer. The sun hadn't had time to warm the pool much but I had just moved from Chicago. It was snowing when I left so I wanted to swim. Only a newbie from the Midwest would swim in water that cold. Anyway, once I got too fat and too tired from being pregnant, I stayed closer to home and gave up my tanning endeavors...and the time with my friends. I never really went back to my friends after that. I stayed home with babies for a few years. That was fun.

Anyway yesterday, as I was sitting there basking in the sun, a little girl came through the parking lot on a bike. She lost control and fell right in front of me. I went to help her and she seemed OK except for a few scrapes. But she said, "I'm so embarrassed."

I felt for her and it brought to mind one of the single most embarrassing moments of my childhood. Actually, not only was it my first truly embarrassing experience, I don't remember anything quite so humiliating after it. (That is, of course, until puberty kicked in and Jim Newman asked Mike Dylo, “Hey Mike, ask her if she needs a nickel.”, after I had become a woman in algebra class. I wanted to die. Only 13 year olds can be so good at that stuff.)

It was the summer before 5th grade and I had ordered one of those pony tails that they sold for a dollar and you ordered them from the back of the comic books with the x-ray glasses and chewing gum that made someone's mouth turn black. You sent them a lock of your hair and they would "custom" match it to one of 5 colors that they had in stock. I got some blondish color.

I bobby-pinned it to the back of my pixie hair cut which I had to get when I fell asleep with gum in my mouth...and that gum ended up all over my hair. So, naturally, my mom had to hack off the gum part which was most of it and the cut left me with some short pixie thing going on.

The day of my embarrassment, I left my house with a plan...and about 15 bobby-pins holding that pony tail onto the back of my head. I was going to ride my bike past the object of my affections' house. I did that a lot back in 1967. Today they'd call it stalking.

So, I got on my purple girls sting ray (with a white basket with pink and purple stripes and pink, purple and white tassels off of the handles.), and pedaled my little heart out to Germaine Lane from my street, Fleetwood Lane. I was so proud of my groovy pony tail and the inexplicable return of my hair...that I rode my bike with confidence.

"Would he be out there?" I thought to myself as I approached his house. He was!

I saw him out in his yard playing with his Hot Rod cars as always. And he was alone!

As I got closer, I readied myself in a pre-planned pose and just as I struck that pose, I made eye contact with him for a moment as I passed him, secure in the seductive powers of my hair and my purple sting-ray...and then the unthinkable happened...

My pony tail fell off of my head and got caught in the spokes.

My bike stopped on a dime as though it were tied to some long rope that ran out right there, and did a summersault. It threw me off and I suffered quite a few external injuries.

I couldn't let the pain slow down my escape. I stood up, grabbed my disabled bike and swiftly carried it home.

I don't remember anything after that. I suppose that’s a blessing. I wish that I didn't remember THAT much.

So, anyway, I told the little girl my story and she laughed. Then, she rode off again, knowing that the only witness to her little faus paux was myself...the Queen of Clumsy on all Bi-Peds. The use of distraction worked well. She forgot about her pain and then it left completly. She was still laughing as she rode off.

I wish there had been someone to talk to me when I did the header off my purple sting-ray. (With a white basket with pink and purple stripes and pink, purple and white tassels off of the handles.)

See ya,

Meg