See, what you have to understand is that neither of my parents really cared about the health risks of my playing out in the sun; sunburn, melanoma, wrinkles, heat rashes--none of these conditions concerned them a lick. No, their reasoning for keeping me out of the harmful rays was much more practical: "The sun," they insisted, "will make you black."

And Lord knows, the last thing this little African American girl, whose family was integrating an all-white neighborhood in Long Island, wanted to do was be (gasp!) black. After all, light was all right, brown could stick around and black--well, as the little skin color ditty went, black had to get back. The message: Do what you gotta do to avoid getting darker. And if that meant avoiding pools/beaches/soccer fields/the great outdoors/any place where the sun could magically turn milk chocolate girls into Hershey's special dark chocolate, well, then that's how it was going to go down.