Thursday, March 25, 2010

TMI Thursday: Blister in the Sun

You may not know this, but I am a soccer referee. I started when I was 15 and earned a lot of money working as a ref through high school and part of college. Well, it was a lot of money to a high school and college kid. After taking about six years off, I returned to the soccer field when I moved to Northern Virginia. The extra money is nice but I primarily ref now because I enjoy helping kids learn the game (the adult games aren’t as much fun) and it’s a great way to get into/stay in shape. Essentially, I’m getting paid to work out instead of paying for a gym membership. There are some drawbacks to working as a referee though. Parents, players and coaches yelling at you is at the top of the list, but forgetting sunscreen on a sunny day is right up there. This happened to me during one of my first days returning as a referee several years ago.

I knew I was in trouble as soon as I got home from spending nearly five hours outside. My face was extremely red. The real problem, however, occurred several days later when I started peeling. Oh, did I mention that the peeling occurred only about two months into my new job? Did I also mention that the peeling occurred while I attended a conference for my new organization where I was meeting nearly 100 people for the first time? There wasn’t enough aloe in the world to help me. My entire face, particularly my nose, and even my ears and the top of my head were peeling. Flakes of dry skin fell when I rubbed my forehead. I guess that you could say that my face made a nice icebreaker in meeting people. I must have explained at least a dozen times that I didn’t use sunscreen while working as a soccer referee. As uncomfortable it was for me to tell people this, it was even more uncomfortable for people to look at me and carry a coherent conversation with me.

Fortunately, the peeling process pretty much ended by the start of conference’s second day. It was amazing how many people looked at me in amazement at how much better I looked. Overall, not a good first impression, but things worked out okay. The lesson here (to the class of ’99): wear sunscreen!

For more TMI Thursdays, please visit LiLu and you can click here to see all of my TMI Thursday archives.

4 comments:

Lucy said...

What did they think was wrong with you? And goodness, haven't they ever seen someone peel from a sunburn or they just couldn't believe you were that stupid, oh, sorry that was mean but my husband is that STUPID all the time, he is forever forgetting sunscreen and then complaining about the peeling!!!

clevelandpoet said...

good thing it wasn't me I have trouble not realizing when joking around is acceptable sometimes. I probably would've made up some horrble and gross lie as to why I was like that.

Sean said...

Lucy - Now that you mention it, I was a lot younger than almost everyone at the conference, so I believe that most people thought "what is wrong with this guy" or why did we/they hire him?

clevelandpoet - I probably would have made up some type of lie like these were burns from rescuing children from a fire, but this was a work event soon after I started a job. Probably not a good place and time to joke.

meleah rebeccah said...

I found you through Lilu’s TMI posts! And, Oh Boy, I can totally relate to this.

I once had a REALLY bad sunburn that peeled forever and it happened right before I was starting a new job. The first day I showed up at work the manager that hired me looked horrified!

I feel your embarrassment!