I’m determined to get to the beach at least once

This year I am going to make it. I’ve decided to put together a scientific plan. After listening to all the government briefings on the shocking fact that programs fail, in spite of the fact that workers put in less hours than an ant working in a colony, I will succeed.

My main focus is to get to the beach at least once during the season. The beach boulevard is filled with broken promises of those of us who live here year round to spend a day at the beach. I don’t know if it is the blinding milk white legs or all the sand stuck inside our bathing suits, but it’s definitely a hazardous experience, especially if you go so far as to put your big toe in the water.

I always have the best of intentions. I have my park sticker on top of enough glue that won’t come off the windshield with a blow torch. I pack up the beach chairs, umbrellas, blankets and defibrillator and head out. Seems simple enough.

The problem is once I wade into the water, I realize just how wet the water is, and I hate being wet. It is why I have an umbrella and boots.

Then there are those things swimming around in the water, touching your legs and stuff. I don’t what those gooey, stringy, amoebic things are, but I know they are not natural and probably don’t have parents either.

Also, once I leave the water, which let’s face it, I go in mainly to look like I do fit in, I can never find my way back to where I left my stuff. It could be the fact that I have this film over most of my eyes and no rods and cones to speak of, which doesn’t of course affect my work. But I could have just as well drifted to a beach off the coast of the Middle East for all my sense of direction.

I stumble into whole families tucked under beach umbrellas and apologize to beach coolers and offer to exchange insurance information to chairs. It’s ironic since my husband’s eyesight seems to improve whenever we are at the beach. I swear he can spot a woman wearing a French cut bikini a couple of towns away. He’s been on double secret probation since the last time a woman walked by wearing a bathing suit with only enough material on it to make a dinner napkin. It was quite embarrassing, not the suit, but the fact that his eyeballs fell out and we had to spend hours digging them out of the sand. There were so many of them buried there it was difficult to find the right ones. Apparently this is a common problem.

So picking out the right spot to put your things is one of the more important aspects of going to the beach. You don’t want to give the impression that you don’t know what you are doing. Please, you live here, right? It’s all worth it, when you look over that vast expanse provided by Mother Nature, breath in the salt air and see nothing but miles of people. The ocean and sand are in there somewhere; they have to be. Don’t be surprised though if there are enough people to fill Tiananmen Square four times over. Seeing all those beach goers may make you anxious. Or it might be the guy with the machete chopping a watermelon the size of Ohio.

Or maybe it’s the family pitching a tent that could have its own reality show, “Forty Five Kids and Counting.” So you are going to have to do some reconnaissance. Personally I picked out the cooler people, not as in stylish, but as in lots of food to share with their next door blanket neighbor.

It’s good to be at the beach, so let’s hit it this year.