I accidentally gave a Mom self tanner instead of sunscreen :|

I was a camel keeper at the John Ball Zoo in Grand Rapids Michigan one summer. It was an awesome job! I had 3 people working for me, 2 guys helping lead camels and 1 girl loading kids. We ended up giving 50,000 rides that summer. I had a joke at the beginning of the summer that I was going to have a tube tying party for myself at the end of the summer after dealing with so many kids, but I ended up loving them! Kids are pretty funny. We have these amazing large camels they are riding and the thing they are most obsessed with is their poop. One little kid said, “Look Dad, big black jelly beans!” while pointing at the little perfectly round pellets dropping down.

We had a bejankety old wooden booth with a cabinet full of sunscreen, bandaids, sunglasses, lost and found etc. One of the funniest things that happened that summer was a Mom came up and asked if we had any sunscreen. I opened the cabinet and gave her one of the many bottle we had stashed in there. We both thought it was sunscreen. It looked like sunscreen, and had the word sunscreen on it. She liberally applied it to her 2 year old’s bald head and shoulders, and arms and legs. She thanked me profusely and went on her merry way. She came back about 3 hours later, and had an orange baby. The funniest thing was, if you have ever used self tanner, you have to apply it delicately and thoroughly and really pay attention to application or you will have streaks. Well, this baby had streaks and the Mom had orange hands. We both laughed righteously and luckily it ended up being a cool cloudy day so the baby was good to go.

Big lesson, don’t give a baby self tanner, they don’t know how to use it correctly.