Wear Sunscreen

Thoughts about life & the "Wear Sunscreen" speech.

Last week I was browsing quotes for the little videos I make when I came across one that unlocked a core memory...

The "Wear Sunscreen" speech.

I remember hating that song when it came out (the article it's based on came out in 1997 in case you want to feel old!).  It seemed like it was overplayed everywhere!  To me, it was just some boring words put together to scare the graduating youth.  I've heard it a few other times since then & really paid no mind to it until a random Thursday in April when the memory was unlocked & I read the speech again.

I was doomed from the first line:  "...Wear sunscreen."

Although James's Melanoma didn't originate from a mole, the sunscreen bit is not lost on me.

I found myself laughing & crying reading through true statement after true statement.

Ever since the song came out, I was always apprehensive about the line:

"The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday."

For whatever reason, I was always waiting on my blindside moment.  It finally came for me at 8:42am on a random Wednesday in December 2021.  

I've learned that both the best & worst moments of your life come when you least expect them.

One of my favorite phrases is "You don't know what you don't know.".  It has helped me be more understanding in a lot of situations.  The "Sunscreen" speech was written in the "You don't know what you don't know" style. Sometimes the only way to truly understand something is to live it by experience.

I'm now 15+ years out of high school & into adulthood.  I've had life experiences that I could have never even imagined up for myself.  I got married.  I worked in retail for 10 years.  I became a foster parent.  I adopted a child.  I lost my husband to cancer when I was 34 years old.  I've had the absolute best times & the absolute worst times.

I wake up thankful every day that I'm another day older.  Age is a privilege denied to many.  I'm so glad that I made it to the age where the "Sunscreen" speech is a reality instead of just a bunch of words strung together that would never happen to me.

The thing about life is that in order to get the good parts, you have to take the bad parts too.