Moms tend to do a lot of negotiating on the beach. For example, I overhear one Mom say to her son as they pass behind my beach chair: “Is that a deal?” Moms also do a lot of refereeing: “Oh, stop it, you two, it’s her turn to play with the bucket.” Otherwise, Moms just lay down the law: “Brendan, I said come on.” “Stop throwing sand!” and “Stop throwing the seaweed!” are two commands I hear frequently; both bring back fond memories of my childhood spent on the South Jersey shore.
When parents are not being so litigious, they seem to be having a lot of fun, sometimes more than the kids. Many state-of-the-art sand castles and fortresses I see today bear the distinctive signature of frustrated architect-engineer Dads. I see several Dads still engaged in a big dig long after their kids have moved on to more interesting parent-proof activities. Moms love those photo opps of their children buried up to their necks in the sand. It’s one of those rare moments that they can get them to hold still long enough for a photograph.
Dads also are the source of an unlimited number of improvised beach games. Most commonly, I witness father-son competitions that involve the tossing of balls of all shapes and sizes into holes in the sand, into sand buckets, or into any available receptacle, such as a picnic basket. Unfortunately, these games never seem to end well.
At some point in the competition, an argument invariably breaks out over some alleged misinterpretation of the “rules.” For example, is a point earned if the tennis ball goes into the bucket but then spills out when the bucket tips over from the force of the throw? Amidst much gnashing of teeth, hollering, and screaming, someone usually storms off down the beach, or pleads his case at the Supreme Court of Mom. The kids also throw tantrums from time to time.
Today’s Dad also plays improvised games with his daughters, of course. I watch one Dad counting the seconds his two daughters, in turn, balance on one foot on the base of an upside down sand bucket. While Dad’s eyes are fixated on his watch, Mom regularly peers over the top of her sunglasses, and then gazes over the top of her summer novel, just to make sure none of the other children is drowning.
Grandparents being grandparents
A grand-dad is wearing a Boston Red Sox bathing suit and holding in each hand a large sand bucket—one blue and one yellow. He is trying to get his three grandsons, all of whom appear to be under 10, to accompany him to the ocean’s edge to help fill the buckets with water. Not one is listening to him. They are all furiously digging in the sand. Grandpop doesn’t look too upset. He must be accustomed to being ignored. I watch as he just stands there in the sun, for a long time, with those two buckets in his big, lobster-sized hands, his stomach hanging over his suit like patriotic bunting over the upper deck at Fenway, with a dazed look of bemused resignation on his face.
In a sign of the lengths to which some grandparents will go to please their sons, daughters, and grandchildren, at least a dozen of them are in the water with the kids. The water temperature today is 67 degrees. When I stuck my big toe in, I thought I was going to have a heart attack. These folks are all octogenarians. Why aren’t they all dead by now? They must be aliens. It’s the only reasonable explanation.
At these temperatures, the lifeguards should be obliged to plant, alongside the green “safe to go in the water” flag, a blue one, which indicates the color humans are likely to turn for being foolish enough to heed the green flag! I suppose these grandparents all deserve those “Greatest Grandparent In the World” t-shirts they wear with such pride.
It sure takes a lot of stuff to have fun
A cursory inventory of supplies families “needed” this week at the beach follows: buckets of every size and color, pails, sand molds, short-handle shovels, long-handle shovels, sand trowels, beach towels, personal towels, chairs, loungers, free-standing umbrellas, sport n’brellas, umbrellas attached to chairs, sun protection gazebos, play pens with canopies, footballs, soccer balls, kick balls, nerf balls, Velcro balls and paddle-catchers, lacrosse sticks and balls, surf boards, boogie boards, skimmer boards, Coleman coolers (some with wheels, some without), Igloo coolers, no-name coolers, baskets of food, paper bags with food, cell phones, ipods, cameras, camcorders, books, magazines, and a variety of wheeled vehicles to cart all this stuff from the parking lot to the beach and back!
Fashion statements (and mis-statements)
There’s probably a rule in New England that all adolescents and adult males (for females I heard it is voluntary) must wear a Boston Red Sox cap at the beach. Yet, no two caps are the same. I see green caps with a red B; blue caps with a red B; red caps with a blue B; light blue caps with a slightly darker blue B; and even hunting caps with a pair of black sox on the back and a black B on the front.
Grandparents don’t wear baseball caps much, but many of them should be forced to do so. Every evening, lifeguards should collect all those straw hats, Australian bush hats, fisherman caps, pork pie hats, and other awful things these people put on their heads and just toss the lot of them in a bonfire (the lids, not the people or their heads!).
Shepherding and stewardship
What do you call a bunch of sweaty, freckled-faced kids who complain that they never get to do anything fun? Summer campers, of course!
Well, a trip to the beach is just the thing to improve the dog days of summer and put an end to all that barking and whining. Unfortunately, the New Hampshire State Association of Summer Camps picked my vacation as the week to re-enact the D-Day invasion of the Normandy beaches. The day-campers just keep coming, relentlessly, wave after wave of them, day after day.
On one particularly sunny day, a large group of campers, all clad in orange T-shirts, arrives first. Their counselors stake out their territory by planting in the sand two yellow flags emblazoned with big red hearts. The banners flap furiously in a strong ocean breeze, making it easy for everyone to keep their bearings. These are clever, maintenance-free demarcations of the boundaries of the theater of operations.
The beauty of this strategy is confimed by the behavior of another contingent, which eschewed uniform-colored t-shirts for the campers, as well as the flags in the sand, opting instead for multi-colored shirts for the kids and orange highway cones to establish their territory, respectively. Unfortunately, in their rush to the ocean, several eager campers knock over the cones, thereby calling into question the ability of the group to reconnoiter on the beach in the event of a crisis, such as a jellyfish reunion, Class of 1972.
It is obvious that the “red heart” counselors are the kind of leaders that would never issue a command that they are not prepared to carry out. The blue tee-shirt, surf-based lieutenants lead one brigade of campers into the ocean, where they fully engage with the kids in water maneuvers. At the same time, the turf-based counselors in their pink tee-shirts establish a beachhead: the kids dig trenches and construct fortifications as the counselors supervise the work from several comfortable beach chairs. This is not the first time these counselors have led a beach command.
In contrast, all the counselors from the “conehead” division seem perfectly content to supervise their charges from the shore, using the opportunity to talk and laugh among themselves. In this group there is no division of labor: all the campers are in the water at the same time! The closest the coneheads come to establishing a recognizable beachhead is when they have their kids place towels on the sand before charging into the water. Lots of non-campers leave their towels on the beach (duh!), however, and flat towels on a flat beach are not easy to see, thereby calling into question the wisdom and experience of the coneheads, as well as the judgment of the poor parents who entrust their children to these well-meaning, albeit uninspired leaders.
Although I’m not a betting man, I would be willing to wager that I could guess, with a high degree of accuracy, which campers were smothered with sunscreen before pouring out of their respective buses on this brilliantly sunny day!
*****
I suppose that a week like this every few years reminds me of how good I’ve had it in on that serene, tranquil North Carolina island, where I plan to return next summer. I’ll be sure to pack a copy of this posting, however, just in case I catch myself complaining about those relentless black flies that annoy on windless days in the mid-90s. If my wife must bear the burden of my whining, I won’t blame her if she buries me in the sand while I am napping, places a bag of pretzels on my head just as the fishing boats pass, and then posts a picture on Facebook of me with my new "trashmen with wings" friends.
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