We’re up at my folks place here in Otisville for a short visit, will be leaving shortly after breakfast in the morning, and I’m nursing a sunburned knee.

Yes, I said “knee,” as in the singular. My left knee in fact. This has to be the dumbest sunburn I’ve ever had.

Some of you have already figured out how I managed to sunburn one small part of my anatomy: I did it by driving up here to my folks place. As a rule I don’t tend to lay out in the sun anymore—haven’t done so in years—but each summer I still get a bit of a tan on my left arm due to my habit of resting it out the driver’s side window as I’m driving the car. When I’m in my 70’s my left arm will probably look like really old leather while my right arm will still look pretty healthy and a lot paler in comparison. I plan to tell any small children who happen to ask that my left arm was whithered during a major magic duel versus the villainous Voldemort so they’ll think I’ve gone crazy in my old age and leave me alone.

Normally my legs don’t get much exposure to the sun as I tend to wear shorts indoors more often than outdoors for reasons that are, in all honesty, pretty stupid, so I won’t go into them here. Today, however, was one of those rare days in which I wore shorts during the drive up here to mom and dad’s house and it was also the day that a normally one and a half hour trip ended up taking three hours because of no less than three sets of major construction along the way that randomly brought traffic to a standstill for upward of three minutes at a time.

Now when part of my anatomy is first exposed to the sun for any length of time its first reaction is to burn as though it were a lobster dropped into a boiling pot. Over the next day or two said burn will slowly cool off into a tan which will then provide a decent amount of protection against further burns for the rest of the summer. My left arm did this back at the start of the season and was only slightly reddened by today’s events. My knee has led a sheltered life inside long pants most of the time I’ve been outdoors, however, and as such was totally unprepared for direct exposure to the sun during a three hour drive. And before you ask, no, my thigh is not sunburned because I wear the sort of shorts that come almost to your knee. There’s a very distinct line on my leg showing exactly where my shorts ended and my exposed knee begins. The rest of my leg is also untouched because it was bent at such an angle that it wasn’t exposed much at all. The result being that the top half of my knee has a very red and very painful sunburn while the other half is perfectly fine and wonders what the top half is making such a fuss about. It’s the smallest and stupidest sunburn I’ve ever had.