Memorial Memories

This was probably the first time in my life that I actually did something for Memorial Day weekend. I usually just sit around and sleep. It’s never been very important to my family to celebrate patriotic holidays. Which is really odd considering that my parents support the armed forces like no other. So you’d think that every Memorial Day, 4th of July, and Labor Day, they’d be out in full force with their flags ablazing. Instead, we usually spent the day at the mall. Which, I suppose, is actually quite American if you think about it. I remember one year my mom let me get sparklers and so I stood outside my house and giggled like a maniac waving around a fiery stick and spelling my name in the air. And that, my friends, is the extent of my fireworks experience. Awesome! And we’ve never owned a grill, so I didn’t even know what grilled food tasted like until Guy Green and his little friends starting grilling steaks for a dollar my junior year of college. But this year, this year, I got to celebrate like a normal person with grilled foods and outdoorsy activities like boating and professional sun burning.

Yes, I spent the weekend at a lake, riding around on a boat and rubbing SPF 55 sunscreen onto my embattled white skin. (I mean, you don’t get this white from spending time outdoors. It took years of indoor reading for me to achieve this ghost-like look.) I baked like I was in an oven, but managed to escape pretty much unscathed. Thank you Neutrogena! (link) I am not so much lobster-looking as freckled looking. I should have known that one day I would have fantastically freckly arms just like my mother and her mother before her. I just didn’t think it’d happen so soon. Too bad they can’t all merge into one. Then I’d be awesomely tan. And everybody loves a tanned girl.

I did not get pictures of this weekend, which I know you all are hankering for. The fact that I do not have documented proof of my body in a boat does make this sound like a piece of fiction. And when you toss in the little fact that I slept in a tent? That’s the making of a novel as outlandish as The Da Vinci Code.

But it was good, you know? I enjoyed myself out there in the sun in my teeny shorts and modest bathing suit top. I watched a lot of people wipe out on water skis and wakeboards and smiled happily as I sat on the swim deck and dangled my pale, pale legs into the brown, brown water. I met some great people and decided that beer really is as gross as I thought it would be. I fell in love with oatmeal cream pies all over again and learned that a boy who can talk about Justin and Britney and why the world was so much better off with those two crazy kids together for at LEAST thirty minutes, is fantastically attractive.