When selecting a brand, type and configuration of sunscreen, it’s important to bear in mind your needs, lifestyle and personal habits. For us, it was easy to choose a high SPF rating, opt for the waterproof, and go with a trusted name brand. What I didn’t take into account was my personal propensity for crying, and none of the brands had anything to protect me from that.
We bought two brands of sunscreen. We got Banana Boat as well as the generic brand sold by Walgreens. The Walgreens kind, though a buck cheaper, honestly doesn’t protect the way Banana Boat does, which was a little surprising. First lesson, don’t be cheap with yourself when it comes to protecting from skin cancer. The buck you save may be more powerful than the buck of a horse.
We went out to the beach slathered up head to toe with the good stuff and it worked like a charm. Though by charm, as if to extend the animal metaphor, I mean it ultimately bit me like a snake.
I was offered a free “water flight” which I though would be fun, but ultimately resulted in the daddy dunking me in the water in lieu of a nice soft landing. I don’t much care for water in my eyes, so I let my subtle dissatisfaction be known by crying myself hoarse and rubbing the salty sea water (in vain) from eyes.
Therein lies the rub. I mean it literally; the rub lies in the rub. I rubbed the sunscreen off my face, specifically in the place where I do my crying. And when I say it “lies” in the rub, I don’t mean that I’m lying, because the pictures I present as evidence don’t lie.
So I rubbed the tears and sunscreen away and, in the ensuing couples of dozens of minutes, burnt my precious face to look like some kind of sad, sunburnt clown.
Not so awesome if you’re me, and I know you’re not, but I am so I’m justified in my complaint.
Thing is, if you want to make a quick million overnight, don’t try to reinvent the wheel (the octagon is already pretty effective already), but instead modify the formulas that exist and come up with a sunblock that is resistant to cry-faced rubbing. That’s all you need to do.
You know my baby-faced face of a preschooler is going to suffer an ounce or pound of beating from the sun, and you know that if I need a waterproof variety it means I’ll get my face wet. Do the math here; I need it to protect me from the ensuing sadness that invariably is the saltwater in my eyes. After reading some aquasana reviews online i decided to go with them.
So for now I get to look like a strange mime or something. If only science was smarter than kids. Oh the world in which my own kids may live. I envy them for it, I think.
Above – Here you can see my unusual burn, which only came to pass after I’d wiped away the sunscreen in a general crying motion.