The New Farmer's Tan

Pumpkin and I went to a park last week to swim and I saw Amish women swimming in public, in bathing suits, for the first time. At the risk of being rude, I'd have loved to have taken a picture or two to show DH just how hysterical it was to be seen.

Having grown up in the country, a farmers tan is not unusual. But, to see one on a woman it something, I tell you. Here you had women tanned from the elbow down and mid-calve down with white extremities everywhere else. And, it would appear that the approved bathing suit for public outings in a one-piece, with the Tankini allowable for single females. The men all wore swim trunks which were quite attractive with their all white and farmer-tan bodies and bushy goatees. As we were leaving I spotted one man wearing those rubber clogs which I also thought might have had a hard time getting through the Order. The whole thing was funny and surreal at the same time. It reminded me of the time I saw an Amish woman getting takeout pizza in her horse and buggy at my first home.

Pumpkin was oblivious to my course in social studies; she was delirious to splash, kick and run in the water for hours on end. I only got her out by telling her that the pool was closing. when she asked me about all the people still in the pool, I had to lie and tell her they were being bad and not listening. Yes, I lied. Did it work, yes. Was it wrong, not in Mommy Law. And, as I tell Pumpkin almost daily now, I am the law as she knows it.

Signing off in the land of female farmer tans.....