Oh, goody. I've been waiting for an opportunity to tell this story. It's from high school.
On the last Saturday in August, I was invited on a trip to the beach. (This was around San Diego.) I had just moved into the area, and it was the first time I had been on a beach in August. I got the most spectacular sunburn. I had second degree burns on everything above the waist, front and back. And that is not an exaggeration.
For the first week and a half, the pain was excruciating. But after that I discovered a few interesting side effects. For instance, when skin dies in a large patch, it peel off and what's left behind is supposed to scab over. But I discovered that if the top layer of dead skin doesn't come off, it will form something like a blister. What's even more interesting is that the skin underneath won't stop oozing, so the blister can grow quite large.
It was fun, actually, to sit there and squeeze the blister to make it grow. The dead layer of skin pulling away felt something like removing a band-aid.
It was close to 2 months (I think) after the trip that I decided to remove all the dead skin at once. (My face had healed enough that I could simply rub the dead skin away.) The largest piece was about 2 square feet. (I offered some to my biology class, but was declined.)
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