There are a few things that truly concern me in this world, one of them being the environment and in a subcategory thereof, its affect on people.

Understand, I am a person of relatively light complexion, I have never had a real tan. As a teenager, I was always the victim of ridicule. "You are soooo, white!" was a frequent comment. I started to tell people I was Irish and that saved me a heap of trouble. (Although my heritage is quite heterogeneous, the truth is I have no Irish background to blame) I tried and I tried to acquire that golden tan that seemed to come so naturally to everyone else in the world. I can't even remember how many times I have sunburned so bad that I couldn't stand to wear clothing. Time after time I told myself that THIS time would be different and this time I would tan, THIS was my year.

That year has never come. I did it again just the other day while walking around at Bushwhacker Days in a spaghetti strap shirt with absolutely no sunscreen. I walked, I burned, I blistered. Then I asked myself, "Why do you think you don't need to wear sunscreen?" The answer didn't come to me until a few days later.

My equally white friend and I were talking about how we always let ourselves get burned, because we desperately want to be tan, because our cellulite, spots and veins won't be quite so glaring. We want to look healthy and young! But the cost is high. I've decided that for me, it's not just high, but potentially deadly and not worth the risk.

People in my family have suffered severely due to their days of sun worship. My aunt had a very large chunk taken out of her arm. Melanoma. My uncle refuses to get the melanoma that has started growing on his neck removed.

My friend also has a family history of melanoma horror stories.

I began to investigate. Let me tell you a little bit about melanoma from what I learned online at Wikipedia. It begins with a well cited summary:

"Melanoma is a malignant tumor of melanocytes which are found predominantly in skin but also in the bowel and the eye (uveal melanoma). It is one of the rarer types of skin cancer but causes the majority of skin cancer related deaths. Despite many years of intensive laboratory and clinical research, the sole effective cure is surgical resection of the primary tumor before it achieves a thickness of greater than 1 mm.

Around 160,000 new cases of melanoma are diagnosed worldwide each year,

and it is more frequent in males and caucasians. It is more common in white populations living in sunny climates than other groups. According to the WHO Report about 48,000 melanoma related deaths occur worldwide per annum.

The treatment includes surgical removal of the tumor; adjuvant treatment; chemo- and immunotherapy, or radiation therapy."

As I continued to read, a couple lines particularly worried me, "Occasional extreme sun exposure (resulting in "sunburn") is causally related to melanoma. Those with more chronic long term exposure (outdoor workers) may develop protective mechanisms."

So it's more likely that someone like me or my friend will develop melanoma. And my fears were confirmed, "Possible significant elements in determining risk include the intensity and duration of sun exposure, the age at which sun exposure occurs, and the degree of skin pigmentation. Exposure during childhood is a more important risk factor than exposure in adulthood... Individuals with blistering or peeling sunburns (especially in the first twenty years of life) have a significantly greater risk for melanoma."

It seems I have hit the trifecta of risk factors. Now I am hoping that I am still young enough at 22, to learn from my past experiences, get over that fact that I will never be beautifully brown and slap on some darn sunscreen before I tread beneath the Sun's tempting rays, like Sirens waiting to gobble me up. I am also hoping that I can convince others like me to take pride in their beautiful "Irish" skin and start unnecessarily obsessing with something else.