The Inferno That Wasn't

     In the summer, as most families do, we enjoy swimming. We are responsible, we wear sun screen. The boys are used to me slathering them up with sun screen as they are on their way to our pool. At first it was a struggle, they didn’t like it, it was cold, it felt funny, it smelled weird, and so on but after explaining that it was either sun screen or no swimming my boys took me seriously and decided that they could deal. I would usually bring the sun screen back into the house at the end of our splash-fest but one day I left it outside. The next day we were preparing to go out and do it all over again but Adam wouldn’t get near the door. I told him to come on. He told me no way was he setting foot outside our door without his sunscreen. I told him that I would put it on him when he got outside but that was not good enough, he was not stepping out the door, he was even tip-toeing around the bit of sunlight that came through the windows because he was not going to get burned up by the sun. I knew that my little neurotic son wasn’t going to be swayed so I walked out, grabbed the sunscreen and saved my son from the incineration that he would no doubt incur from his walk out the door and to the little table where I had thoughtlessly left the sunscreen the night before. The table is, incidentally, under a huge tree with lots of shade so it wasn’t exactly in direct correlation with the flames that were surely awaiting my young man. Glad that I and the other two boys didn’t burst into flames from stepping out the door un-sun screened.  Catastrophe averted, thank goodness.