Column: “Marking Time”
It has taken Spouse about two decades, and a dozen or so failed family outings, to come to grips with the fact I am not a beach person.
My idea of a good time is not moving blankets and picnic tables around trying to stay in the shade of a telephone pole on a scorching beach.
My idea of fun is not trying to figure out how to wear thongs. My 14-year-old daughter tells me they are now called “flip-flops” and cringes with an audible gasp when I call them thongs, the name I grew up with. Apparently there is another type of beach wear that is called a thong … and we are not talking about that one. As far as I am concerned, you might as well try to walk with a two-by-four stuck between your toes as to make these “sandals” work. Surely there is a more comfortable way to keep your digits cool yet protected than this. I know some people can wear them – I’ve met them — but for me, the cramped, tired toes hanging on for dear life while the flip-flop smacking sound keeps time is just not something I would volunteer for. And yet, they are standard requirement at The Beach.
As is sand.
Even if all the sandwiches are packed at home, well in advance, in a clean, sand-free and bugIess kitchen, sand will find it’s way onto your lettuce and into your mayo. Oh, the joy of munching away on potato chips when you bite into that one chip that fell into the sand and was put back in the bag by a miniature person – you let your guard down, see, and weren’t paying attention to the little ones. This oral sensation is akin to biting into a bar of Lava soap. You grind away plaque while you quickly reach for relief in the form of the now-warm punch/pop. Ha, ha on you – the paper cups have all fallen into the sand.
You think you’ve brushed off all the sand from kids and equipment as you are reloading the car? Get real. A trip to the vacuum cleaners at the neighborhood car wash is as certain as sunburn.
But these are all just leaves on the tree of summer discomfort. As I ponder the real root of my beachophobia, I think it comes from a lifetime of wearing glasses, or, put more specifically, a lifetime of near blindness. The connection: Ever try to water-ski with glasses, or – if near-blind like me – without them? It is a no-win situation. It will ruin you for life.
Without: You give your specs to the guys in the boat and after a couple of minutes of skimming the water, you can “sense” they are all signaling something to you – you certainly can’t hear it. They think their message is getting across. It’s probably something about how much time is left for your ride, where they are going to drop you off. Or it could be the likelihood of you hitting a cement buoy full-bore. But all you can see is an image not unlike something seen through a microscope on a glass slide, sort of an amoebae with fat arms flailing.
During my teen years, my relatives had some property not far from what is now Rendezvous Beach (yes, they still do, and no, you can’t borrow it for a weekend later this summer). At one time it was not uncommon for fences to extend out into the water along the Bear Lake shore. Well, to make a painful memory short, while skiing along blindly there, I was just certain that at any moment I was going to zip into a barbed wire fence. Not a confidence builder for your summer fun.
Ski with glasses? In the likely event of a fall, they are now property of Charlie the Lake Trout. Contacts? Well, maybe you can ski with your eyes tightly shut, but for me that was out of the question. Giving up the glasses to the goofballs on the boat was the only option.
It is those kind of things that begin to wear on your Beach enthusiasm.
Please, don’t put me down as anti-summer or anti-swimming. Hey, I find the gleaming tile of a refreshing near-body~temperature swimming pool just the ticket on a hot July day. Bare feet on cool grass – sans thongs, of course — can be a delight. But I have to question the guy who blisters his back just to pretend Bear Lake or Hyrum or Pine View Reservoir is “really kind of warm today.” Let’s define warm, please. Just because ice is no longer floating does not constitute “warm.” Bear Lake has never been nor will it ever be “warm,” as defined by Webster and Wamsley.
Just don’t get me started talking about the mosquitos.