Through the Sands of Time…

My parents never took me to the beach when I was little. I really don’t know why. I’m sure my mom had something to do with it. Three kids were too much for her. But, then again, she said we couldn’t have a real Christmas tree because she was allergic to pine needles. After I grew up and had my own kids, she laughed and told me that she wasn’t really allergic to pine needles, just picking up dead pine needles all over the house. The bitch.

So, yeah, I’m thinking that the reason we never went to the beach was because of my mother. I guess I can understand why. I would be off into the ocean, trying to make friends with a stingray. Cheryl would get mad and march off into the beach sunset, never to be found again. David would just sit and play with a toy truck in the sand, smiling all the while. David would have been a great beach person.

So, we just took trips around the state of West Virginia. Sure, we also ventured down to Tennessee to visit my mom’s best friend or over to Virginia to visit my cousin, Jackie. We went to Canada and watched my dad fish. But, other than that, we stayed in the WV, Pennsylvania, and Ohio perimeter. Which was ok. I didn’t know about how much fun people were having at the beach.

And therefore, I also didn’t know that people could build stuff out of sand.

What???  How cool would that be? If I saw something like this when I went to the beach when I was little, that’s what I would want to do for a living. Yes, I would then want to grow up to be a sand sculpturer.

photo pinterest

If I saw this on the beach I would not go in the water. I would first stare at this for about 30 minutes, and then I would want to create my own.

 

Ok, yeah, I would get frustrated at first. My mom would have handed us buckets and shovels without involvement. She would just stand over us, looking around. My dad, who would have been filming us as he always did, would hand my mom the camera and would show us how to build a sand castle.

But, that wouldn’t be good enough for me. I mean, I just saw a freaking alligator/dragon sand sculpture. I would want to make something special. Bucket forms in a circle with a shell on the top of each one was not creative enough now that I saw art.

Pure art.

How about something like this, Dad?

Or this.

 

Oh, yes. I would have given up my smoking actress employment route and taken up sand sculpture for a living. But, alas, my parents never took me to the beach when I was little. I never got to make sand castles with little plastic buckets. I never got to dig a hole and cover up my mother.

I had to wait until I was older. When I had my own kids. Well, not to cover up my mother.

Since I wasn’t able to go to the beach until I was in college, I tried to make up for it by going about every summer. We first started by going to Ocean City, Maryland, where they had wonderful beach sculptures. But, most of the ones we saw were religious. I just didn’t care if the guy worked on it for forty days and forty nights, I just was not into religious stuff. Give me a freaking dragon/alligator or something like this please:

I would love to see this. Young Vickie and older Vickie. I would have stared at it for thirty minutes and then would take the kids to build our own.

Well, except, that since my parents didn’t take me to the beach when I was little, I developed no talent or skill for sand castle making. Actually, I sucked. We did bury my son one year up to his neck and made him into a mermaid without his knowledge. We would giggle as we molded breasts for him and told him we were making him into a beachy strong man with big arm and leg muscles. It was a pretty good mermaid.

But, other than that, no skill. I wouldn’t let the kids use the formed buckets. No, we were going to make a castle with just our hands. Well, not like this one-

This was done by someone whose parents took him/her to the beach when they were little.

Even this one was done by a former beach child I am sure. This kid’s parents owned a beach house. I bet I am right. He probably sculpted this with his eyes closed. That’s how good kids can get at sand sculptures when their parents take them to the beach for vacation. Can’t sculpt out of sand when you are in car heading to Canada to watch your dad fish.

No, I will admit when I have no skill set. So,we were going to make drip castles! I watched someone make drip castles when I was pregnant with Adam. That was the summer that I wore a bathing suit that was green and red with black specks. At seven months pregnant, I looked like a damn watermelon.

So, I learned all about drip castles. I was ready for kids. They would go to the beach every summer, damnit, and learn to sculpt.

So,I found that the sand at Ocean City, Maryland wasn’t as good as the sand at Myrtle Beach for some reason. The first time I started scooping up sand, I was in heaven. I turned into a kid and would sit on the beach all day making the best drip sand castle ever. The one above, no offense, was nothing to the ones the Pellillo family made every year at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We would sign our creation before we left for the evening and put a big WV beside our name. Yes, I was finally able to make a sand castle! Yeehaw!

It wasn’t until my kids were a bit older, and I realized that they had given up after an hour or so of drip castle building, that I found that I was all by myself. I was sitting in a water hole in my Mickey Mouse t-shirt, dripping away on fantastic spires, when I looked at some women that were parked nearby. They were sitting with full make-up on, sun visors on perfectly coiffed hair, with their bright, long, red fingernails resting on the beach sand chair arms. They were my age and they were watching me.

I felt stupid. My kids abandoned the magic family drip sand dripping castle making and went into the ocean with their boogie boards and their father. I didn’t even know they were gone. Adam was working on one of the many bridges and Alex was working on making the roads throughout the kingdom while I sat in my water hole scooping up new wet drippy sand to create yet another forest tree. But, alone I sat. I had my hair pulled back into a ponytail and was wearing a freaking Mickey Mouse over sized t-shirt.

Wasn’t I supposed to be behaving like the golf widows right beside me? Wasn’t I supposed to be sitting in a beach chair, reading a book and watching people walk by?

I guess my drip castle making days were over.

I never made another drip castle. Oh sure, I made some right beside my chair, like the sad looking starter kit that I made in 2010, when I took my kids to the beach after my divorce.

Adam joined in for a while, which made me happy. But, for the most part, we were over drip castles.

Time to read books and watch people.

Until the grandkids come along. Grandma Vickie will explain to them how a drip castle is made.

From my chair.

Mr. Magoo on Crack

When you marry the person you love, you marry the good and the bad. You promise to honor and obey. (Traditional wedding vows were the norm when we got married, damnit.) But, nowhere did it say that I had to ride in a car with my husband.  I call my now ex, Mr. Magoo to his face, so that’s not a secret.  “Buckle Up and Close your eyes” would be an appropriate phrase.

Magoo is the worst driver in the world.  (Sorry for the exaggeration. I am sure there are worse drivers in Outer Mongolia, where ever the hell that is.)  He drives into the direction he is looking.  Sure, people need to have their eyes on the road at all times, but not Magoo. Countless times he would point and say, “Look at that, Vickie” and then drive in that direction. I would answer, “I can’t, Jay, someone has to drive..”  But, if I hadn’t screamed numerous times, I think we would have taken out countless mailboxes through the years.  He would get mad at me for making a “We are surely going to die” noise each time.  I guess he wanted me to say, “Golly gee, Jay, there is a mailbox coming into our windshield. Oh, look, the post has impaled me,”  instead of screaming. I rode with my arm holding onto the strap by the door and one foot on my imaginary brake.  He is one of those drivers who ride up to a red light and then come to a quick bumpy stop, the kind of stop that feels like the back of the car is going up into the air a few feet.  He does this, instead of slowing the acceleration and taking his foot off the gas and slowly applying the brake. (page 43)

I hated the thought of the Washington-DC beltway to get to Ocean City because Magoo loved speeding and jumping lanes without looking to see who was beside him. He had his seatbelt on, after all, and that made him invincible. I literally cried every time we went on that stupid beltway. Oh, yes, I tried to drive it, to lessen my need for a drink, but Magoo shouted out commands, “Get in the right lane. Now… Now Vickie… Vickie…Get in the right lane… Vickie….Vickie…NOW…Shit…You waited too long. You almost hit that guy. Do you want me to drive? “

Since I was the co-pilot, I decided to find a route so we wouldn’t have to go on the beltway. It was called the, “We are Now Going to Myrtle Beach” route. The first year or two we would go around Charlotte, North Carolina, which had a string of red lights and a speed limit of -25mph. He did not like this road Sam I am.  So, I found back roads that took us by South of the Border. But, Magoo could not obey speed limits. Not when he had an ocean waiting for him. When we entered the town of Latta, I told him, “You need to slow down. The speed limit is 25.” Magoo didn’t believe me. He sped up. And of course, a cop pulled us over. I think Alex started crying. But, that may have been me. I was so mad at him.   I did the quiet, “I’ll have the lobster”  and close the menu routine all week.

Magoo had a 1977 MGB that I rode in maybe 3 times. I called it the “Little Piss Ant”.   He tried to behave himself, but the top was down and now he could look straight up. He was loving a convertible.  “Maybe I will buy a motorcycle.”  “Well, you better buy more life insurance is all I can tell you,” was my rolling-pin wanna-be answer.  He couldn’t drive a motorcycle. Dear God, Magoo could wreck a stationary bike.

We are now divorced and I don’t drink so much anymore, but he invited me out on the river on his new Craig-Cat, which is like a catamaran.  Mr. Magoo on crack…on the water…Those poor kids on inner tubes…they are so dead.

People Pee in Pools

Beach trips are supposed to be fun. Well, unless you are a mother. You can never really rest when you are on a beach vacation. But, when you are in your fifties and your kids are old enough to be doing their own thing, a trip to the beach sounds peachy.

Well, this one wasn’t. I went to the beach with a good friend, who, um, is not a friend at all anymore. And I don’t even know where to start.

Let’s not start at the beginning. The beginning was normal. Let me jump right in to say that I sat on the beach beside my friend who believed that the world may be flat.

I’m sorry, what?

Sitting on a sand chair, looking out over the ocean, my friend began the morning with a very interesting question. I mean, it is, coming from someone in their mid-fifties.

“Vickie, now this ocean…is it infinite, meaning does it go on and on or does it end somewhere?”   Oh, she was serious. I just looked at her for a few seconds to see if there was a follow-up smile. No smirk, just wonderment.

Well, I’ll be. My friend was stupid. So, I thought I would play along. “You mean like at a country somewhere?”

“Well, yeah.  This is the Atlantic Ocean, right? So, does it just go on and on…or does it stop somewhere?

I just looked at her and replied, “I believe it ends in Africa.”

“You’re shittin me?”  She was surprised.  Wow. Africa. Who would have thought?  What I found cute was the fact that she felt it necessary to define “infinite” for me, like I was the one who was stupid.

Now, remember, I didn’t start this story at the beginning. You probably think that I am throwing around the “Stupid” moniker a little to easily, since I am supposed to be a friend and all. I would tend to agree…if I hadn’t experienced a few days of similar chatter before this nonsense.

“Lifeguards…Vickie, do you think they have like a special training session where they learn how to save a life? I mean, I know that their main job is to watch people on the beach.”

“I read somewhere where they have like an afternoon or two of a lecture.” Might as well make up some lies.

It all started when we arrived at Myrtle Beach. We actually had a nice trip down and talked about a lot of different things. To back up, I had met her when she was my aide when I taught special needs at an elementary school. She was often forgetful and had probably lost several pair of glasses and her mother’s ring just in the first few months that I was there. She repeated things often. I didn’t think anything of it. She was fun and we became friends. She had mentioned that she didn’t want to go to the beach with the same group of ladies that she went with every summer, so I asked her if she would want to go to Myrtle.

So, the trip down was nice. It took us about nine or ten hours to get there. We got to our resort and immediately hopped back into the car and went to dinner. I looked over at her and saw she was crying behind her menu.

“What’s wrong?”

She missed her daughter…..who I should mention was twenty-six years old.

Um…ok..I felt like a bad mom because I didn’t cry about my kids. My twenty-three year old daughter was getting ready to move to freaking Japan for a year. I should have been the one crying.

Things sort of spiraled out of control from there.

She repeated on a time delay everything I said like I never said it in the first place…I’m talking like fifteen times a day…She forgot everything..

I began and ending the day with reminders. “Don’t forget your breakfast card.” (Walk to the elevator)

“Vickie, do you have the room key? I forgot my breakfast card.”  Of course you did. She forgot her camera. She forgot her shampoo. She forgot flip flops for the sand. She forgot her brain. By the end of the week, I wanted to feed myself to the sharks.

We went to a grocery store after our interesting first dinner to buy food and drinks for our small kitchen. She was upset about something, but I thought maybe she was now missing her husband. Shit, this was going to be fun.

Found out during our screamfest on the way home that “I have ALWAYS went in with my friends for food when we went on vacation.”

She was mad because I bought what I wanted to eat and drink. There were only two of us. I don’t like freaking blueberries. I don’t want them on my cereal because was going to eat at the resort restaurant. We had free breakfast coupons for each morning. But, she bought blueberries. Why buy stuff that I am not going to eat. We were only going to eat lunch in the room. What the hell was the big deal?

I heard disturbing stories about the women she usually went to the beach with. First, the five of them would always get an apartment several blocks from the ocean to save money. Then, as she explained, they would go to a breakfast buffet at a nearby resort that didn’t check to see if anyone was wearing a bracelet or had a coupon. On their way out, they would pocket hard boiled eggs, lemons, tea bags, and everything else they could get their hands on so they could make egg salad sandwiches for lunch. The bread was split five ways.

She went on to tell me that after lying on the beach before lunch, they would go to another resort and lie by the pool for the rest of the day. They cooked dinner everynight with the things they brought from home or stole that day. They went out for pizza maybe one evening.

I just sat there. I just couldn’t believe that women my age would steal lemons so they could make lemonade for lunch.

So, imagine my surprise the next day, our first day on the beach,  when I inquired about a beach umbrella rental. We brought our own sand chairs, but I wanted an umbrella since I stay out on the beach all day. I told her I would pay for it. No biggie. It was $15.00 a day. But would she sit under it? Nope..she wouldn’t even put her beach bag (my bag, she forgot hers) under the umbrella, for fear of feeling she would have to share the cost each day, even though I told her I would take care of it. She sat in front of me. What the hell?

She fell asleep in the sun and had her mouth open and I thought she kinda looked like she just had a stroke..everything was sort of drooping on one side. She had no idea I took her picture, which made me feel like I was getting away with something…..which was great. The rest of the day she had a towel on her face. Again, just because she wouldn’t sit under a rented umbrella. Notice how far back my umbrella and chair is. I had to almost yell to talk to her. Stupid.

At the end of the first full day, my friend had repeated things I had just said. She told me the same stories that she told me on the nine hour drive down to the beach. I would just smile. By the end of the second full day, I replied with a,” I know. I just told you that.” By the end of the third full day, I was a little edgy with a, “Oh my God, I just said that.” By the end of the fourth full day I was hoping a shark would eat me.

For example, our state’s elderly senator, Robert C. Byrd, had just died. I saw it on the internet and told her about his passing. At dinner, two hours later, she told me:

“Oh, while you were in the shower, I heard that Robert C. Byrd died today.”

One evening while entering the elevator in the lobby, I noticed a coupon for Domino’s Pizza. “Hey look, pizza coupon if we want to have pizza some evening.”

Sure, we made a few stops to drove off some people, but she noticed the coupon and took it as we approached our floor. “I saw this coupon when we got on the elevator. I didn’t want anyone else to take it.”

Oh, you did, eh?

On the last day on the beach, I wished I brought a pen with me to write in the back of my book all the “Rita-isms” that came out of her mouth. I decided I could write a book.

I pulled my chair out into the sun a little each day so I didn’t look like a fruitcake yelling over to her as she sat by herself.  When she started talking, I couldn’t pretend write fast enough.

“Vickie, if I stepped in one of these holes that those kids are digging, and broke my ankle, could I sue the lifeguard since it is his job to watch the beach?”

“No, I think you would have to sue the kid.”

“How would I know which one to sue.”

“He would be the one with the shovel.”

I wrote a note in the sand to some of my facebook friends. I wanted to write, “Please help me.”

I wanted to go home.

We went to a buffet for dinner the last night. I told her it was going to be $27.99. She knew this. She also knew that it was a BUFFET. There would not be any ordering off of the menu. Again, it was a buffet. As soon as we got there, her eyes got real wide, like she didn’t hear me say that it was going to be….$27.99 and promptly asked the waiter for a menu.

I was having trouble with the wireless connection and she told me that a CONNECTION means that it has to CONNECT somewhere, so I should have a plug. I told her I didn’t have to have a plug because it was a wireless connection.

She laughed, like I needed to be humored. “It is called a CONNECTION for a reason. It has to CONNECT in a plug in the wall. That’s why you can’t get on the internet.” Even though I had been on there most of the week here and there with no PLUG. As I sat on the balcony that night, I was wondering if the fall would kill me. This was just miserable.

During a walk along the beach right before dark on our last night at the beach, we went down to a little lagoon-area. There was a couple with two beautiful springer spaniels who were galloping after each other in and out of the water. There were small fish that swam into the little inlet and it was fun seeing some other creatures.  After we finished talking to the couple and a fisherman who caught a small shark, my friend pointed and asked,  ”Now, Vickie, what kind of thing would have made those kind of marks…they are are along the beach here, in and out of the water. What would make those I wonder?”  “Well, Rita, those would be dog paw prints.”  The damn dogs were just running through there.  I started to walk out into the ocean. Ok, I didn’t really, but I thought I just should end it now.

The ride home was much different than the ride down to the wonderful beach vacation. On the way home, she screwed up the TomTom GPS because the end destination was her daughter’s home address, not mine. (We live in the same town.)  She got mad when I said, “Seriously, I think I can get home fine after we hit the Virginia line, let alone Fairmont.” She gave me a dirty look.

I think what made her go off on me was the fact that she had an ice cream cone and it was melted down all over the seatbelt.  I don’t know how she even let that happen, but she looked like a child sitting in a highchair left alone too long. There was ice cream everywhere. I was driving and had an ice cream cone and I was fine. I just really wanted to get home.

Everything changed when we stopped at a rest stop somewhere in West Virginia. We both used the bathroom, and I saw that she was done first, standing by the front door. I went and stood by her and said, “For a rest stop, this place is beautiful.” She turned around and went over to look at maps. So, I went out to the car. She never came out. Minutes passed. I called her on her phone. I heard the phone ring, as it was lying on the floor. She dropped it once again. So, I thought I would just let her read her damn map and come out to the car whenever. I couldn’t take it any longer so I went back in to the rest area lobby. She was standing by the door.

“Why didn’t you come out to the car?” I was huffy, I admit.

“I thought you were in the bathroom.”

“I came over and told you how pretty this place is.”

“You did not.”

We screamed at each other the rest of  the way home. She said I belittled her for repeatedly saying, “Oh my God, Rita, I JUST said that!” and that I didn’t want to do anything in the evening. Yeah, I did too want to do something, I  actually wanted to jump off the balcony. I returned the yelling by saying that I had never seen anyone so cheap in my whole life and I was afraid to ask her if she wanted to go anywhere because I didn’t really want to have to sneak in.

She was also mad because I didn’t want to lie by the pool.  I didn’t drive eleven hours to lie by a pool. People pee in pools. Why would I want to sit my butt in an inner tube and float down the stupid lazy river…hello? It is not a river. I told her before we left that I was a beach person and that I sat on the beach all freaking day. People do pee in pools. People I don’t know. She said she was a beach person too. Then I screamed at her, “Why didn’t you go up to the pool area by yourself? It’s not like you were sitting with me anyway. You were afraid I might charge you to sit under the umbrella.”

By the time we pulled into my driveway, we were no longer talking. She slammed the door, and then had to re-open it to get her suitcase. I laughed out loud, because that spoke volumes to how the week went.

Needless to say, we are no longer friends. I do have to thank her for one thing, though. When I got home, I wanted to remember everything she said and did. So, I found wordpress and wrote this little story about it.

So, this is my first blog post.

And, um, the Atlantic Ocean also stops at Portugal.