The heat of the sun beats down on my back, almost magnified by the glass that it passes through to get to my skin. I sit staring at a white stone fountain in fromt of me. My eyes hurt a little as the sun reflects off the fountain like the brights of a car at midnight I'm cooking, and I know if I sat here for more then an hour I would walk away with my neck slightly burned and my eyes perminatly dimmed by the brightness of this white stone. Behind me I know the glass windows have got to be hot from the amount of light passing through them and in front of me I know the tile isn't sense it's reflecting all of that same light back at me with a vengance.

I'm waiting for my sister to return as people browse the racks of bathing suits and such that sit in between me and the glare off the white tile. One of the clerks at the desk behind the fountain complains about the glare and as I sit there the irony begins to sink in: so here I am, at a suntan parlor where everyone is annoyed by the sun.

The second clerk goes to the window behind me and begins to drop the blinds. It makes sense I guess, no unauthorized tanning in the lobby, it's bad for business when I am abusing my privilege to burn myself for free not ten feet from the oven. Really, I am a bad example, people might get ideas and do something crazy like sit under the sun instead of getting zapped like last night's pizza. Or worse, realize that they are paying $30 for a tan your average field worker makes bank to acquire.

The heat on my back stops as the blinds blot out the sun behind me and I realize that there are artificial lights now illuminating the room, after all, why let the competition even have a foothold. I crack up laughing as I realize that these people just blocked out the sun voluntarily so they could pay for florescent tube lighting. After all, the words "energy crisis" don't mean anything right?

By now the people in the lobby surely think I am nuts, laughing to myself about their insanity. But really, who amongst us can talk about sanity when all of us have paid money to watch many a beautiful day on TV while the sun shown bright in our own back yards?