Wear sunscreen outdoors in the sun

If any of the readers who peruse my work see me in the near future, you will see that my face and neck are shining — or radiating, as it may be — examples of why you should wear sunscreen when prolonged outdoor activity is planned.

Baseball season started in full swing — pun intended — Monday at the TimesDaily Classic at Russellville’s baseball field.

This was the first baseball game I had watched in person since last July. Since it is February, I made the executive decision that I didn’t need to wear any sunblock despite the fact that I have fair skin due to an Irish/Scottish heritage. Needless to say, I fry like an egg in a skillet when I stay out in the sun.

I thought very wrongly that the sun wouldn’t bother me in the midst of a warm Alabama winter for some reason.

I sat in the same spot for a couple of hours, and now almost exactly one-half of my face is very red. This extends to one side of my neck and one ear. My nose is the cut off point. Past that on the right my face is as white as always.

Both my arms were burnt in the process as well.

It doesn’t hurt very much, but one side of my face is a bit irritated and feels tight.

Let my humorous appearance be a lesson to you; wear some sunscreen if you are at risk of sunburn.

Sunburn can start after as little as 10 minutes in direct sunlight. Here is a bit of trivia for those who don’t know. SPF is short for sun protection factor — but as far as I can tell it looks like sunproof shortened. One SPF should protect someone’s skin for 10 minutes, which again brings the “sunburn begins in 10 minutes” example back into play.

That is how a person going out on the beach, the lake or out at a ballgame is supposed to tell what SPF of sunblock to use. SPF 30 will last for 300 minutes, or five hours. To know how long a sunscreen should have your back — or keep it from burning as it were — just multiply the SPF by 10. That is how many minutes of protection the average person should have with the product.

I neglected to put on any sunscreen, even though I have some. That little mistake has cost me a few days of feeling warm and irritated on one side of my face, especially my left ear.

I hope that no one makes the same mistake that I did Monday morning by not putting on sunscreen. The sun made me into a redneck as one of my coworkers put it. Solar radiation has indeed rendered me a Southern stereotype.