Best Friend Shenanigans

I think every girl, at some point, feels the need to be blond. Visions of walking down a beach, golden tresses blowing in the wind, deeply tanned and well toned body … aww, life is good!

My best friend and I were no strangers to this desire. Shortly after high school, we made our first trip to Florida, chaperon free. Being limited in funds, we had sought ways to bleach out our hair using the sun. We had been told that lemon juice worked really well. After our arrival and check-in at the hotel, we proceeded to the grocery store. 

We had discussed our lemon juice on our 15 hour drive.  We decided we would buy “Real Lemon” in the bottle, pour it in squirt bottles , and then spray it on our hair while we were sunbathing. With the car loaded with bottles of “Real Lemon” we anxiously returned to our room, put on our suits and headed to the pool.  First we slathered up with suntan oil.  I’m a fair-skinned red head, so you can figure out the result of this step.  Then we proceeded to wet our hair and squirt on the lemon juice. We figured if a little worked well, a lot should work really well.

As the sun started to dry out our hair, mine got stiff as a board. Then came the bees!  My best friend, flapping her hands over her head said “What is this with all the bees?  What’s the deal?”  I also was fighting off the bees, when it occurred to me, “ I think they are attracted to all this lemon.”    All Bees Unite!!

We decided we would take a walk down the beach, and surely the bees wouldn’t follow.  Through the warm sand we walked, right down to the water’s edge. Nothing feels quite as good as wet sand when it squishes through your toes. Nature’s pedicure. 

We were wearing suits that were strapless.  God forbid that we would get tan, or in my case, burn lines. As we were strolling along listening to the soft rumble of the waves and the song of the seagulls, we were oblivious to the darkening clouds forming overhead.   Imagine our surprise when we began to get pelted with sharp, pounding rain drops.  We turned and started to run back to our hotel. We had to hold the tops of our suits up, or I’m sure they would have been down to our waist.

Then the stinging began. This time it wasn’t bees. The rain was drenching our lemon covered hair, and all that lemon juice was running into our eyes.   It was quite the decision, as we continued to run, whether we were going to hold up our suits or wipe our eyes. To the gratefulness of the others on the beach, we chose holding up our suits. So we ran blindly the rest of the way to the hotel, eyes clenched tightly due to the burning, stinging lemon juice. 

If you want to bleach your hair, it’s probably best to go to a salon.  Lesson Learned!

This post is for the challenge from The Red Dress Club.  We were asked to write a memory with "lesson learned" either the first two words or the last two words.