Everyone loves a good folly, right?
The weather\’s so nice out there today that I thought I\’d take a short walk to the local sporting goods behemoth store (Dick\’s, in case you were wondering). It\’s not a long walk, probably not even a mile, so I thought it would be enjoyable. I needed a brown shirt, and some sunscreen. I left the store with an orange shirt, and no sunscreen. Apparently brown shirts are not in fashion at the moment. I also bought some Dick\’s brand batteries, a product about which I\’m not sure how I feel.
It is, however, this lack of sunscreen that I\’m surprised about. They\’re a sporting goods store. They\’re basically saying \”We have what you need to go out and enjoy the great outdoors!\”, and it would seem that they\’re also saying that the corollary statement to that is: \”Skin cancer for all! We don\’t care!\”
I wouldn\’t think that would play so well in a boardroom, but hey what do I know?
Oh, and do you want to know the kicker? The orange shirt that I bought has a tag on it that says it has an SPF of 50. The friggin\’ shirt is UV-resistant, and they don\’t sell sunscreen. How do you like that?
Undaunted, I arrived back home and decided that I\’d try the gas station down the street. Sure, it\’d no doubt be expensive to buy sunscreen there, but then at least I\’d have it, and as a bonus I could buy some of that tasty Cherry Coke Zero*.
(*I have changed my pop stance from having given up diet pop to mostly having given up all pop. I realized that railing against aspartame was probably not much different from railing against high fructose corn syrup – I have, after all, never seen anyone putting a tap and spigot into an ear of corn to drip out the sweet, sweet syrup. Hence on occasion I will have a container of whatever moves me, and the Cherry Coke Zero does just that.)
Sure enough… no sunscreen. They had hand lotion, shampoo, allergy pills, advil, vaseline, condoms, and tampons (and more!), but no sunscreen.
So I give up. Failure has been achieved. If anyone needs me, I\’ll be sitting around in my underwear, drinking white wine.*
(*I may be serious.)
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