Orange and Leathery Skin

I have a confession.

I've been going to the tanning bed.

Yes I know its horrible for me but I, like every girl before her wedding, I want that beautiful glowing tan skin, unfortunately I can't get that when I'm sitting inside on the computer all day at work. A couple of months ago, after much deliberation I decided to go ahead and get fifteen sessions at the our local tanning bed. I went over to the tanning bed place, sat down at the check in desk and waited for someone to notice me -- no one was at the counter. A man walks in, sits behind the desk, and asks if I have an appointment. As I glance up to say no, I make eye contact with the tannest man I have ever seen in my entire life. I mean he was ORANGE. -

-The same orange I was when I accidentally put too much Bath and Body Works Self tanner on six years ago. I didn't read the instructions. I applied ten layers of self -tanner and went straight to bed. Overslept for school the next day, threw on my uniform, didn't realize it until I was sitting waiting for the bell, and I noticed my carrot colored skin legs peering out from my knee-length brown plaid skirt. Thank God I grabbed my sweatshirt it would have been a whole lot more obvious. It took three days and some major scrubbing to get my skin back to normal. -

- Back to the tanning bed - My first instinct is to gasp but thankfully I didn't do that. I want to tell him he could get skin cancer and that he is aging himself by years maybe decades. But I don't. Instead I gingerly sign my skin away to fifteen sessions.

He asks me how many minutes I'm going for and I tell him something that won't fry my skin (or make me orange and leathery like you). Really I have no idea how long. He gives my skin the once over. I mean he's really considering its ability to withstand the bulbs. He gauges nine minutes and I'm ushered over to bed 5. I always get bed 5 for some weird reason.

Once I'm in there I have accepted all that could happen to me, this is about the wedding of course. I climb into the tanning bed, pull it closed and my first thought is of a movie I saw - I'm not sure which one- where the girls get trapped in the tanning beds. I think it was final destination. What if I get locked in here? What if someone comes into room 5 and locks me up in here. For good measure I open the tanning bed ever two minutes, poke my head out and check to be sure I'm the only one in here.

My second thought is how many bodies have flipped around in this thing - I'm flipping around because I think that's what your supposed to do in there so you don't get tanned more on one side. What if they forgot to clean it and I'm sitting in the sweat of the person before me. What if I'm sitting in a bunch of people's sweat... What if I get sick? What if I get a staff infection. Are the safety glasses I have on really clean- because the container I took them out of had green water. Maybe that's the color of the cleaning agent....and man this is the longest nine minutes of my life.

And suddenly the lights flicker off and its safe for me to take my glasses off and jump out of it. I inspect my tan lines and of course I see no improvement. This means I'll be back fourteen more times. Maybe I'll end up like all the orange people that work here or the orange people from the reality show about tanning beds. And one day someone, a friend maybe, will say you uh....your skin kind of has a weird orange color and I'll come to my senses and my tanning days will be over. Hopefully it won't get that far.