i'll unfold an educational one.
so it's a cold, cloudy, rainy april in portland, and i leave to go to el paso, texas to do some work learning the family business, owning and managing apartment complexes. this is my introduction, so naturally, i start where people start, doing maintenance tasks.
my job was to prepare the swamp coolers for the summer, and there were a shit ton of them. several hundred at least, and you have to not only replace the aspen on all 4 sides, you have to drain, scrub and clean all of those, as well as checking out all the water lines, pumps, drippers, fans and so on.
well, it was a hot, sunny and dry spring in el paso, and i was doing labor intensive work on top of 3 and 4 story buildings for 8-10 hours in the heat of the day. on the third day, i went to scratch my very itchy ear and something fell off. i figured it was just some pigeon crap or rust or other grimy shit that i had been cleaning off the roofs for the last few days.
so i take a look at what had just dropped off my ear and could not figure it out. it looked like some sort of strange rock, but it was kinda softish feeling and wet. i went to brush off my ear again, and realized that i had more of it on my ear. then i realized it was attached to my ear. then i realized what it was.
my ears were literally oozing puss from sunburn which was hardening in the sun. i ended up pulling off sizable chunks of puss from my ears, just a ridiculous amount.
i asked the other maintenance guys there how they managed to avoid that (they didn't wear hats either). the answer: chap stick to the ears.
i put chap stick on my ears for the next two weeks and they healed up quite nicely.