Sam Venable  

Special Contributor

I know this makes me sound like a geezer who can’t string 25 words together without including “times were a lot tougher when I was a kid,” but you’ll just have to forgive me.

Folks do have it better today, by golly. They don’t sunburn anymore. At least they don’t if they remember to put on sunscreen.

As far as I’m concerned, sunscreen is one of the miracles of modern living.

When we send an aircraft into outer space and bring it home with pinpoint accuracy, I am not impressed. When we design computers that do the work of 250 people in l/250th the time, I yawn. But when we develop a potion that keeps people’s hides from turning into epidermal lava, I want to double-flip backwards and shout hosannas.

With each passing summer, I am more impressed with sunscreen products.

You can take your basic snow-white East Tennessee cave dweller and rub on some sunscreen, then stake him down in the broiling rays and he will not so much as turn pink.

Times were not always this good. Back when I was a boy, people warmed up to the summer sun the old-fashioned way.

They cooked.

It was a metamorphic process not unlike the life cycle of an insect.

People would venture into the season’s first brilliant beams, turn redder than a rooster’s comb, suffer two or three days, then peel their outer shell and start over. This process would continue three, four, five, maybe six, times until a thick level of bronze carcinogens had built up on the head, neck, shoulders, arms and legs.

At that point, these people would be declared “healthy” and . . . huh, what’s that? Did I hear someone just say, “Didn’t they use suntan lotion back in the old days?”

Oooooh-ha-ha-ha-hee-hee-hoo-hoo! What a laugher!

Suntan lotion did as good a job of blocking the sun’s rays as cellophane tape. It was little more than mayonnaise laced with dye and fragrance. Advertising claims notwithstanding, it had only one real function in the cooking process: basting.

When lily-skinned mountain people ventured to riverside or lakeside, they lathered on thick layers of suntan lotion and settled back to listen to their skin sizzle. This pleasant sound continued throughout the day, only to be replaced that evening with a gentle eeeeee-iiiiiiii! as they tried to roll over in bed.

But the advent of real, honest-to-gosh sunscreen changed all that.

I have tried different brands and different strengths. They all work. You put it on and you don’t burn. It’s that simple. If the Defense Department could develop an anti-nuclear-chemical-poison lotion along the same lines, we could stick out our tongues at our enemies and save jillions of dollars on rifles and tanks.

Sure, I’m just as sentimental as the next guy. Sometimes I do get nostalgic for the good old days, when third-degree sunburn was as much a part of summer fun as broken arms and food poisoning.

When those moods strike, all I gotta do is toss a few handfuls of carpet tacks and broken glass into bed. Then I can hop into the sheets and spend the next eight hours in a miserable, toss-and-turn snooze down memory lane.

No, this isn’t the exact sensation as sleeping on beet-red sunburn. It’s not quite as painful, actually.

But, what the heck? Progress has its price.

Sam Venable is an author, stand-up comedian, and humor columnist for the Knoxville (TN) News Sentinel. He may be reached at mahv@outlook.com.