I don't think this was me, unless I am forgetting something. You might be thinking of Jesse!

It was shrift, most recently.

I tanned beautifully and evenly as a child--little gingerbread brown girl with bleached-white hair. When the hormones kicked in so did the burn factor, so I learned to monitor my sun exposure, and I gradually got less and less able to tolerate it. I've never been a lie-and-baker, anyway. Boooorrring. Plus, even with a visor and black-dark sunglasses, I get glare headaches really easily.

But then we got a boat, and it was lovely to stretch out on the deck and read while H trolled in and out of dappled shade searching for the wily, elusive bigmouth and, well, I'd read the cautions on the enclosures with the HRT, and made my uneasy peace with 9x the chance of breast cancer. But I'd somehow forgotten about sun exposure.

I still have color scars from where I burned in patterns like a painted pony.

I got tan in the summers as a kid the way kids do -- farmer's tan, out playing and running around, not just baking. If I try to bake, I burn like toast immediately. I still have damage on my calves from one sun poisoning when I was about sixteen.

I still tan, though, lightly, just from walking around in the summer with short sleeves and all. I should be better about sunblock. I am with my face, though.

I am one of those who gets burned through t-shirts. The t-shirts are however good for hiding tattoos you don't want to discuss with your mother.

Ugh bon bon, what a PITA for you two.

As for the sunburn discussion, I am on the sunburn side of the spectrum and I seem to have passed along the same skin to my kids, esp my daughter. Oops.

I have a memory of Rio making fun of her DH for calling sunblock suntan lotion. hee. Although in my head they are two different things. Sunblock comes in SPF numbers like 25, 30, 45, 70. Suntan lotion smells like coconut and comes in SPF numbers like 4 and 8.

I don't so much "tan" as turn a not-painful shade of darker pink. When its a burn it hurts.

People lived for millenia without spf clothing.

They also died young and wrinkled.

There was no sunblock in my childhood. That's what killed the dinosaurs I played with. At least a couple of times a summer, I'd get stuck somewhere with no shade and have to spend a day or so lying in a dark room wearing a soft t-shirt. That was the era in which people would coat themselves with baby oil and iodine to tan faster and lie in the sun all summer. I was saved by the fact that I can't read very long in the sun, so I was too bored to lay out.

Neil Gaiman linked to this: (Uncomfortable plot summaries) [link]

They include:

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER: Teenage serial killer destroys town in fit of semi-religious fervor

FIREFLY: In an analogue of the post-Civil War west, a white man on the losing side bosses around a black woman.

SERENITY: Men fight for possession of scantily clad mentally ill teenage girl.

LORD OF THE RINGS: Midget destroys stolen property.

RAMBO III: The United States provides arms, equipment and training to the terrorists behind 9/11.

STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE: Religious extremist terrorists destroy government installation, killing thousands.

STAR WARS: RETURN OF THE JEDI: Handicapped mass murderer kills septugenarian, is lauded.

They also died young and wrinkled.

Like raisins?