A Sock Tan For Springtime
Down here in Australia, spring started on the first of September. No confusing third-week-of-the-month season changes here. Gotta keep things easy.
The usual signs emerged, or erupted as the case may be, to alert us all that it was time. More daylight, a jumpy spider, and a sneeze here and there. I'd say that warmer weather was another sign, but I can't bring myself to do that. The "winter" here isn't what people usually think of as winter, though I will admit to using a quilt at nighttime. I will also even admit to wearing slippers and donning a sweatshirt for nighttime smokes on the balcony. But cold? No.
One thing I will say is that the sun, while still managing to give off some heat, wasn't as strong during winter. Makes sense. One way I can usually tell, aside from it not being hot, is that I didn't earn unsightly sock tans despite the conditions for them being rife. I wore shorts nearly every day. I'm actually pretty confident in saying that I haven't worn pants more than ten times in the almost ten months I've been here.
But with spring, this changes. I have sock tans. Both legs. For some reason, the one on my left leg seems a little starker. And they didn't take too long.
It's not like I haven't experienced spring before. A simple walk down the street in, say, New York in the summer might draw some sun if one manages to find it around the shadows of buildings. So one might have to go looking for it by, say, sleeping on a green field somewhere in the middle of Central Park.
Not here. The minute the sun finds skin, it pounces, darkening or burning, whichever your skin is prone to do. I darken. My feet, flat as a piece of paper, don't do well in flip flops, so I am forced to walk the Brisbane sidewalks in running shoes. So yesterday, I went in search of some kind of flip flop that might be nice to my feet so that I may work on making the delineation between my black and white halves less stark.
That is to say, I've gotta get rid of this unsightly sock tan. White feet and brown legs don't look good when they're on the same person.
