Already Dreaming of BEACH

Yes....I look forward every year to a trip to the shore....beach bound forever in my soul. My favorite smell is coconut...and I even go so far as to wear Hawaiian Tropic tanning oil as a perfume and to moisturize my hands all year round. I own more tropical garb probably than native Hawaiians do.

It's a wonder I don't do the grass skirt thing.
I don't ever dress up as a hula dancer or anything like that for Halloween because I wouldn't feel like I was wearing a costume. I am Island Girl at heart.

I digress though.

I can remember a time at the beach that I didn't like so much, but got over fairly quickly. You know it's love when you get over the negative stuff in a hurry.

I was around 6 years old, I guess. My mom took me to the beach, I believe with my step-dad - I think they were only dating at the time. I don't remember those kinds of details.

I was happily munching away on some crunchy Cheetos in the high noon sun on South Padre Island. The black scratchy seaweed littered all over the beach as far as the eye could see. In the distance, oil refineries gleamed in the daylight like dormant alien ships docked on the beach. Whatever. The hot sand burned my feet so I stayed on the towels as much as possible. When I did wander around, I could either go toward the water and the cooler sand, or I could maybe walk a few feet before I was too close to the cars parked in the lot behind us. The sand dunes flanking the parking lot were sort of comforting, like a safety wall guarding our happiness from the rest of the world. Some of them had tufts of tall grass shooting out of the tops of them like the unwanted chin hairs I get sometimes. Most of them were just grayish-tan sand with flecks of black gathering at the tips.

The precise moment of unhappiness came when I thought it would be nice to feed the seagulls a morsel from my bag of Cheetos. Big Mistake. Mom said don't do that, of course, but did I listen? Of course not! I threw one up into the air so I could see them dive for it and catch it. Then once they learned that I was The Source, they started dive bombing ME! Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek! I squealed and mom shooed them all away for me and told me not to feed them ever because they would come after me and all my chips if I did. I listened that time.

I was bent out of shape from it for a while and so stayed on the safety of my beach towel, but I'm sure I finally got over it, hopped over a few piles of black seaweed and made my way into the ocean again.

The End.

And by the way, seagulls are a pain in the ass no matter what state you find them in from Texas to New Jersey. But....it is undeniable their inherent obsession with man-made chips.