You mean you didn't break the streak.  Soooo sad.  😞

The Secret Author contest and all the related games were fun. 

I'm looking forward to the upcoming anthology.  I think I have a story for each theme.  Yay! 

As to tanning, I rarely burn, and at my station in life, I tend to be a bit more cautious when out in the sun. However, I do tan, a farmer's tan that is....I've noticed folks putting on sunglasses when at the beach; I guess the pasty, pale bits of me are very reflective...

Fortunately, there is much less of me than last year; the diet is working. No longer are well-meaning folks trying to put me back in the water....Sheesh...

Four weeks left to come up with a story or two for the anthology...

My father was the last child and so both of his older sister's daughters were right around his age. The younger one hurt a foot by stepping on something sharp which later developed gangrene. Even though the infection was thought to have been arrested, over time it lead to the amputation of her leg above the knee. My father was quite fond of his niece and she had a gaggle of kids that were just a little bit younger than my brother and I so we saw the family quite often. Seeing her lack of a lower limb was just a normal part of growing up. As a consequence I never felt the need to stare at anyone missing body parts. I understood that it can happen to anyone.

I swear I can get sunburned by looking out the window. My worst burn was back in the day when the strongest SPF was 25 or 30. I did apply before sitting on the back seat of my dad's boat as we crossed Long Island Sound wearing shorts over my bathing suit.  Should I have reapplied liberally? Absolutely. Did I? Absolutely not. Burning hellfire for the next week as the giant blisters made my thighs look like alien flesh. Then peeling skin that came off in sheets. I still had the two different skin tones the next summer.

I am not missing any limbs, only my sanity. One of my best friend's brother lost a leg after falling off of a roof. It's not easy. 

7 years before my late husband passed away, he lost his left leg above the knee due to P.A.D., Peripheral artery disease. He never got to use his prosthetic leg which I had to always put on him because he had a stroke in the rehab that made it difficult to use his left hand and it was his left leg that was amputated above the knee. He also was in the process of going to rehab to use his prosthetic and he got to 500 ft in the rehab when he fell out of his wheelchair and hit his stump on the tip of it and shatter the bone and had to have slivers of bone pulled out which made his stump really, really sensitive and so much that he did not like anything to touch it so he quit going to therapy in the rehab. I could not persuade him to go back even 2 years of him healing that stump. He stayed in a wheelchair from then on till he passed away. When I seen him for the first time without a full leg, I looked at him and said with love in my eyes that we will get through this and just because you have half a leg that is not why I fell in love with you in the first place. You are still handsome and sexy to me. But in his mind he felt like half a man whom couldn't even make a living and support his wife. He did eventually get disability  and could help with bills but he was still depressed. It shocked my family that thought I would leave him just because he was disabled but didn't and they said they never knew I was that strong until then. So anyone that thinks that disabled people are different cause they might make them look bad is the weakest people on this earth. They are the strongest ones because they had to personally go through losing a limb and the loved ones that stayed with them are their backbone to that strength. So, @wildone, hope this helps you in knowing that I understand what you went through and you are still a good man in my eyes!

Missing my heart, the last ten years or so in the US has taken that from me as it has turned to stone.  But no body parts, even still have my tonsils.  LOL.

I grew up in the country, and knew several people that were missing something, farm accidents are real and use to be worse back in the day.  I guess because I was around people when I was young that had lost something either from accidents or the Vietnam war, I never thought it was strange or sad, just a fact of life.  Most could do damn near anything else that others could, they just went about their life and did what they could.  

As always, thanks for the look back at this past week.  I so did enjoy the secret author contest, even if I did not get even one guess right.

Can't wait for the next analogy.  

I don't get tanned. I don't go in the sun long enough to get burned. And my skin is the color of milk, so I am really pale. I often joke my legs haven't seen sunshine in forty years. I even swim only at night. Though I'm bald and I dont want those ugly sun spots when I'm older.  

If I casually meet someone disabled, such as in my restaurant, I do ask if there is anything I might be able to do or adjust to make it easier for them. I let them dictate what help they might require.

But I am not a curious person by nature, and I probably don't care what happened to them so I would never ask. My main concern, is there anything I can do to help? If not, then I'll go about my day without thinking of that disability again. 

If you are my friend, and I do have a great friend who lost his foot in a motorcycle accident, I probably would tease you mercilessly. I kind of take my friends where they are at, the rest doesn't matter as long as you are a good person who doesn't cause me drama. 

I have another friend who can no longer walk due to lots of back injuries. When I am around her, I know what makes things easier for her, so I automatically adjust my behavior to compensate and make her feel included. 

Though I have been known to drag her along to certain places where her wheelchair gets me access to shorter wait times. . She's one of my best friends since I was in my twenties.