Patriotism is hard on the body. For those who choose to imbibe into the wee party hours, there’s that post-Fourth of July pain. But whether you choose the nightlife or not, the holiday festivities catch up to you. Too much sun, too little water. Burnt skin and sore eyes. Mosquito bites. Then there are those of us who think no boat speeds, no wake, no force of nature, can buck us off a water tube. We arrive at work on Monday morning wounded and content.
I didn’t do much water tubing this weekend, but it’s not the amount that matters. It’s the weight distribution. I teamed up with a particularly large friend on a tube nearly wide as my bedroom. When we hit bumps, he stayed firmly pressed against the tube while my body flailed uncontrollably, attached to the tube only by skinny little arms. In the heat of the moment, pain rarely reaches your mind, though it lingers in the extremities. You find this out later. I have been doing subtle shoulder stretches at the office, trying to stay limber while avoiding the suspicion of co-workers who may mistake my sore shoulder for weakness.
Then there are the mosquitoes. You walk into work with red polka-dotted skin and everybody immediately recalls similar brushes with the West Nile virus. Co-workers try to comfort you with tales of their own misery. Then when you go home, you see usually mellow-mannered neighbors cursing at random pockets of air and violently slapping at unseen tormentors. Look at what these mosquitoes reduce us to.
Frequent bouts of sunburn can lead to cancer, but at the time this is not your concern. First you worry about the burn, then the itchy peeling, then the sprawling splotches of discolored skin. Some people diplomatically negotiate with their burnt shoulders, but others resort to threats. They threaten to disown their own shoulder blades, simply because of their inability to cope with a rather large burning ball of gas in the sky.
Come Monday morning, according to long-standing tradition, people spend the first portion of the work day engaged in small talk, saying things like, “the weekend was great – how was yours?” But then their grievances come out. They can no longer hide their itching. They do mini shoulder circles to stretch out their tweaked rotator cuffs. Some bring up the virtues of aloe vera. But we’re not fooled. We see their sun-cooked necks. Inevitably, they cave in and loudly plead for mercy from the vengeful Sun God.
This is not complaining. It’s merely young nostalgia. The weekend’s memories are fresh in my mind and if for an instant I dismiss them, I have sharp shoulder pains and stinging ears to remind me. Later, these details will be lost and all I will be left with is exaggerated tales of tubing glory, inaccurate references to witnesses and lies that only my mother will believe. But when I talk about bites and arm tweaks, people relate to these things. These are the remnants of the Fourth of July weekend and we must milk them for all they’re worth.