Monday morning after teaching three hours plus of swimming lessons, my younger brother and I stagger home exhausted. We flip a coin to see who gets to shower first (he wins; I make him promise to hurry and threaten him with a torturous death as only an older sister can if he's not fast) and he hops in. A half an hour later, after I'm out and dressed, he knocks on my bedroom door.
Brennan: Rix?
Me: Yeah?
Bren: Can I come in? I need to ask you something.
Me: What's up?
Bren: There's something wrong with my skin. I've washed my face, like, eight times, but my skin feels all dry and ...
Me: Tight?
Bren: Yes! Exactly!
Me: Hold out your hand.
He obliges. I dump enough lotion in his hand to cover his entire body.
Me: Now rub on your face.
He closes his eyes and rubs as if his hands were a towel and a bucket of water had just been dumped on his head.
Me: Better?
Bren: Wow!...It feels better already. Oh my God...that's amazing! How did you know what was wrong?
Me: Well, your skin was dry because you spend three hours a day in a pool with enough chlorine to kill even the most resistant strains of bacteria and then you come home and you wash your face eight times. Write this down: water dries out your skin.
Bren: What??? That doesn't make ANY sense.
Me: Be that as it may...
Two days later as we're goofing around in the pool waiting for our next swimming lesson to start, I tell this story to another lifeguard, Chelsea, in the presence of Brennan:
Me: Isn't it amazing what a boy with two sisters can still miss out on?? I mean, the boy didn't know he needed MOISTURIZER to make his skin stop feeling DRY.
Bren: What's moisturizer?
Chelsea: It's lotion.
Bren: Oh, lotion. ... I used lotion once. On my hands. I can't remember why.
Chelsea and I watch in dumbfounded amazement as he swims away.
Boys.
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