I thought about going to the beach this weekend, but something stopped me. No, it was not the threat of skin cancer, or the image of raw sewage being poured into the ocean. I guess I just wanted to relax and did not want to deal with the headaches the beach entails year after year.
That’s right! In case you have forgotten, beach trips are a first class pain in the you-know-what. I am sure you know exactly what I am talking about, because something annoying has probably happened to you at the beach too. You have stepped on a piece of glass in the sand, had a sibling throw slimy seaweed at you, or if you are really lucky, you have had an afternoon wave break on you and swish your body around the sea like a washing machine. There is just nothing quite like salt water up your nose.
Sunning at the beach sounds like a great idea. I can almost hear the crashing waves in the background and feel the warm sunlight turning my fair skin to a deep golden brown, but it is all interrupted with the many unpleasantries I tend to forget about until I have spent a half hour circling the side streets of PCH searching for a parking spot. Using valuable laundry quarters for a meter, I am reminded—this is the beach.
After making three trips to the car for the towels, the blankets, the umbrella, the ice chest, the radio—oops, forgot my sunglasses—I remember the very same thing happened last year. This is the beach.
Stripping down to the bathing suit I thought looked decent at the department store, I reach for the Coppertone, the best SPF .2 protection available. Five minutes later, sunblock manages to get into my eyes. Oh, that familiar sting. This moment of bliss is interrupted by little Johnny a few yards away, who shakes out his towel, showering me with tiny sand granules from head to toe. Thanks, kid.
After getting settled into the perfect tanning position, there is always some sort of interruption, be it the bathing suit that falls off at least twice and needs adjusting, refilling the parking meter every hour, fixing the broken umbrella, the blanket that people keep stepping on or keeping the radio antenna facing east to get adequate reception.
Not that I can ever hear my own radio. Normally I hear a mixture of everyone else’s musical preferences, be it Conway Twitty, Neil Diamond or Black Sabbath. There are always certain characters you forget about until you go back to the beach. There are the families who bring gaggles of screaming children. Little boys who try to surf on boogie boards and little girls who make sand castles all day and cry when the tide comes up and destroys them.
There are old women who wear bright-skirted bathing suits and venture out to the water only long enough to get their feet wet until they realize it is cold and go back under their umbrellas.
There are always a Mr. and Mrs. Fitness U.S.A., who cause heads to turn from all over the sand audience as their bronzed, muscular bodies go jogging by in unison. He is normally in neon Speedos, she’s in a thong. I figure I am about half her age, yet would not dare jog in dental floss, let alone wear it at the beach.
The ride home is probably the most tedious part of the beach experience. I just cannot bring myself to appreciate traffic on the I-5 with a lobster-esque sunburn and sand in my ears.
Considering all of this havoc, I suppose I took the easy way out this weekend, laying a towel on a lounge chair by the pool and making some iced tea. I even put one of those fancy umbrellas in the glass and bought a CD of recorded beach noises from Target. It seemed like a wise investment at the time.
My backyard may not be Malibu, but last weekend I not only avoided a sand shower and men in Speedos, I got the advantage of hearing waves and sea gulls minus the unfavorable “delivery” they so often leave as they pass over my beach blanket.
