Forgive my being Tardy to the (blog) Party and Greetings
from Asbury Park! As promised,
today’s blog is brought to you by... The Beach.
Some shore memory (thanks for the suggestion from my bff,
Darryl Graham):
Getting lost
Always involved my parents buying me an abnormally large ice-cream cone ...
that I really didn’t need what with a FUPA and Chitties (chubby child bosoms)
at 7 years-old. I’d stare,
lovingly at the colossal heap of custard, bewitched by the rainbow sprinkles,
as it oozed down my fist, into the cracks of my sausage-link fingers. I’d look up from my frozen lover, eyes
glazed over, and suddenly notice that my parents were nowhere to be found. These yearly occurrences always
resulted in my standing like a deer in the headlights, snapping my Dorothy
Hammil hair styled head from side to side looking for a familiar face, not
caring that the mountain of custard love had plopped to the ground, into my
sandals, just about to burst out crying, and then seeing my family, watching
from a distance laughing at me. At
this point, I’d burst into tears,
fake-limping toward them, telling them that I’d twisted my ankle, hoping
they’d never be able to forgive themselves for laughing at this poor, gravely
injured child.
My brother would laugh and say, “Shut up, Samooontha” a name
that would make me cry harder, thus exaggerating the limp, “We were watching
you the whole time.”
To which I’d wail, “I’m huuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrttttt!!!”
"Do you want another cone," my mother would ask? And I'd skip and pirouette gleefully over to the custard stand.
Stubbing My Toes
Another yearly event.
My best friend, Marygrace, can attest to the fact that nary a summer
would go by without me having bloody toes with chunks of boardwalk embedded in
the bottoms of my feet. Every
summer, just as we’d step foot on the boardwalk, Mayr would call out her yearly warning, “Maybe you
should wear SHOO...” Too late.
This summer, no different. Seems some things never change.
Sand in the Crotch of My Bathing Suit
Guys, you have mesh. Count your damned blessings. Let me explain. We lady-folk have a little pocket sewn into the
crotch of our bathing suits. It
serves no purpose other than to gather sand in a very inappropriate area to make us feel as if we’ve just shit our pants. Once said sensation is evident, we cannot relax until we go into a nearby restroom, peel the
suit off, dump the hard-packed,
log-shaped lump of sand either onto the bathroom floor or into the boardwalk bathroom and confirm that it is not, in fact, a turd. It's been a problem for me for as long as I can remember.
Speedos (thanks for the suggestion from my bff, Genevieve
Hall)
Never gets old.
Why? Guys? Why? We weren’t on the beach for 3 minutes yesterday and we
heard the kids start whispering to each other. “Did you see that guy in the brown bathing suit? His junk was almost hanging out of the
bottom of his suit.
Ssssshhhh. There he is. Look. Look!” Sure
enough, there he was. A large,
hulking man of hot chocolate love... he looked like the guy from Green Mile,
minus the protruding lower lip and retardation (jury’s still out of the
latter)... in a Speedo. Two
words. Not Jewish.
I have to go now.
It’s time for me to decide whether I should put on make-up for sitting
on the beach. I need to get the
make-up that the synchronized swimmers used. They look like swimming mimes.
How on earth do they keep
that make-up from running? Doesn’t
matter if Maybelline says her mascara is water-proof. I look like Tammy Faye after I get out of the ocean.
Happy Summer Everyone!
