A childhood belief about skin

The first eight years of my life were spent in a predominately white small town in Iowa. There were a total of about five minorities in my neighbourhood - my mother (Honduran), my best friend (Filipino), my other best friend (Japanese), and then there was the only black girl in my school. She and I never had classes together, but her first grade class and my first grade class would often get together and do activities. For some reason I was really fascinated by her. I knew that people tanned when they were in the sun and so I thought that her family must have lived somewhere REALLY sunny where they just tanned all the time. I also knew that when *I* tanned I had tan lines and that when I got undressed I'd see the white parts of my skin next to the darker shades of my skin. I truly believed that black people had tan lines underneath their clothes and I would spend so much time trying to take a glimpse beneath the girl's clothes to find those tan lines!