An open letter to my daughter's summer camp

Dear Cascade Lake,

First off, let me start with my thanks. Thank you for providing a summer experience for Noelle that has her outside playing the majority of the day. You see, her dad and I have to work and I wanted for her to have the same type of outside fun that I had growing up where I was lucky enough to have my mom home. I didn't want her in a place where they'd be inside most of the time with field trips to the outside (!) for play. You offer swimming and exploring and sports all day? Perfect. Swim lessons provided by Red Cross-trained life guards? Gimme that pen; now where do I sign? I love it. She loves it. It's perfect.

There is just one thing. You see, being outside in the summer requires sun protection. Noelle, being of northern European stock, has a skin tone that best be described as 'death warmed over'.

You notice the striking resemblance to this famous person, no?

Clearly this could be problematic, yes? Good thing that there are plenty of products on the market today designed to keep fair skin, well, fair. This magic product? Sunscreen. But the secret to the success of the magical elixir is you actually have to apply it to the skin for it to work. And when you don't, this is what happens.

 

The long-term effects of sun exposure aside, can we discuss the wisdom of trusting a 7 YEAR OLD to thoroughly and completely coat her skin with said sunscreen? Hell, adults need help covering our backs, didja stop to think that maybe kids would require assistance too? I shouldn't have to have the camp bus driver make a note to have the staff apply sunscreen to my child so she can avoid returning home looking like she was dunked in the same shade of hot pink that once graced the bedroom walls of my sister.

Cascade, we love this camp. She's made friends and learned to swim and discovered a passion for basketball. We plan on sending her little brother Noah there next summer. If you could just do your part of using the sunscreen I provide to keep her from becoming the star attraction of a lobster bake, I have a feeling we can totes be BFFs.

Kisses,

Caspar's Mom