Aloe Vera Rubdown

Two days at the beach watching a volleyball tournament in the sunshine brought on a nasty sunburn. Yes, I was wearing sunscreen, I just didn't reapply enough. This morning as I struggled through my morning run with radiating shoulders, I thought to myself, "I think I would actually pay money for someone to rub cold aloe vera all over my body." Dreams of getting an aloe vera rubdown led to the recollection of a fond memory from my days at summer camp.

The summer before my freshman year of high school I headed to the University of Iowa for 2 weeks of camp. Not your typical camp with campfires and rappelling (I tried that and found I didn't have much of an interest in archery or horseback riding), this was smart kid camp. We were there to learn! But of course, it was fun learning. And even if it wasn't, at 14 it doesn't matter what you're doing as long as there are cute boys around. And that there were.

When we weren't expanding our minds, one of the highlights was spending the day at the water park. Did we wear sunscreen? AS IF! Sunscreen was totally nerdy and although we were at smart kid camp, we were not nerds. So you can guess after all our fun in the sun we were roasted, toasted, and burnt to a crisp.

We needed relief. Aloe vera was the medicine we needed but our same sex roommate was not a sufficient nurse to apply the ooey, gooey goodness. We needed to get one of the boys from upstairs to do it. And so an aloe vera party was born in the lounge of the dorm. Bikini-clad girls and shirtless boys crowded around to get an aloe vera rubdown. And we didn't just stick to one partner. There was a lot of swinging going on. It was hot...mainly because our shoulders were so burned, but also because we had raging hormones.

Of course, once our counselors caught wind of our shenanigans, it went from rubdown to smackdown. Why do grown-ups always have to ruin all the fun?