Tornados are FUNNY.

I did it. I just broke down and went to a tanning bed. I didn't mean to; it's just that I recently got back from a weekend in the Canaries, and my skin is oh so nice and brown, and the thought of wasting back to a sickly London pallor was just too much for me to bear. I thought perhaps I was more equipped than most in making this decision--after all, I used to work in a tanning salon in college, I've read all the pamphlets and leaflets and health and safety fliers around the issue. And--you know--informative decisions are guilt-free decisions, right? So I went to this place across the street, one of those tiny local places with 'perms manicures tanning bed' written on the windows. I climb into the bed--if one could call this space-shuttle-time-machine-esque cylinder that--where I soon experienced fans that would give an Oklahoma summer a run for its money. They felt sort of like...okay, like this: remember in 5th grade when you took a field trip to your city's science museum, and you touched a giant orb and your hair stuck straight up and you learned, 'hey! electricity's funny!' and then you went into the earthquake room, and the floor shook for three minutes while images of pompeii flashed on the black walls and you learned, 'hey! earthquakes are funny!' and then you went into the tornado room, because you lived in Oklahoma, and for some reason they think that you may not know what a tornado is like, and they turned on some fans that blew some crazy wind and they jacked up the air pressure and turned up the sound of a train roaring until you couldn't hear and you learned, 'hey! tornadoes are funny!' This tanning bed was like that: a miniature version of the tornado room. The buffeting of the fans combined with the heat of the bulbs made me feel like I was home again, and ten years old, struggling to walk against the hot wind coming off the great plains, and I just learned, 'hey! tanning beds are funny!'