"Honey, do we have any sunscreen?" my husband asked.

"Yes," I responded. "I bought, like, a case of it years ago."

"You know that stuff expires, right?"

I actually didn't. I thought sunscreen lasted forever, like Twinkies and Dick Van Dyke. So when I checked out the expiration dates on the sunscreens, I was dismayed to discover that they were all past their prime by at least four years.

Since the weather had suddenly turned warm and sunny, I realized I had to go out and get some lotion. But in the time since my last sunscreen purchase and this one, someone at the sunscreen companies had lost their mind. Maybe it was from spending too much time in the sun.

There was what could only be described as a mind-blowing number of sun protection choices. As I looked at what could be no less than 50 different kinds of sunscreen, I realized that I would need a roulette wheel to pick one.

These were a far cry from the baby oil and iodine suntan lotion mixtures I used as a teen. It was now no longer cool to be tan — in fact, it was downright dangerous. As if cancer wasn't bad enough, you also had to worry about sun damage leaving you looking like a Shar-Pei.

Some of it, naturally, is that we are smarter than we used to be. But a lot of it has to do with all that hairspray Duran Duran used in the '80s that finally caught up with us and destroyed the protective ozone layer. Between aerosol cans and cow farts, we were doomed.

And where there is doom, there are companies to profit from it.

Apparently, it is no longer good enough to just get a high protection number. In my day, we got to pick from zero to 10. Now they start at 15 and go up to 70 and beyond. There are sweatproof sports versions and waterproof beach versions. There are sunscreens for sensitive skin, for babies and for old folks who also might have sensitive skin and sweat and go to the beach. You can buy it as a spray, a lotion or a stick, fragrance-free, oil-free, dye-free, for your face or your body, and even your scalp, if you are follically challenged. They contain ingredients like avobenzo-whosiwhats and oxybenzo-whatchamacallit, which are for sun protection, and sorbitol, a kind of sugar that gives your skin a velvety feel but does not make the sunscreen any tastier. And they boast such features as photostability and being noncomedogenic. I had to look up those in the dictionary and still don't really know what they mean, although I'm pretty sure they translate to "something that will cost you more money."

Meanwhile, back at the drug store, I was stymied. If I got the wrong lotion, we could get a sunburn — or, worse yet, unflattering tan lines. I knew I wanted UVA and UVB protection, but what about gamma rays, X-rays and blu-rays? They may not be a known threat now, but they could be discovered to be next week. Except the last one, of course. That's been replaced by Netflix.

I finally made a purchase and headed home.

"You cannot believe how many different kinds of sunscreen there are," I complained to my husband. "It's impossible to figure out which is the right one."

"So what did you end up with?" he asked.

I pulled my purchase out of the bag.

"I got us each a hat."

Tracy Beckerman is the author of the Amazon Bestseller, "Barking at the Moon: A Story of Life, Love, and Kibble," available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble online! You can visit her at www.tracybeckerman.com.

Photo credit: Onela Ymeri at Unsplash