Finally, everyone slept in, and we lazily made our way to
the beach. We set up, and Jason realized we left the sunscreen in the truck.
Meanwhile, the boys swam and splashed and made a friend who liked to throw
sand. In fact, sand throwing is not frowned upon here. Everyone was doing it.
Moms, dads, children, grandmas. Fine, I didn’t actually see any grandmas
throwing sand, but I assume they do based on the strong sand throwing
tendencies of their youth. Almost as if on cue, my boys were also throwing sand.
I could not take it and had to stick to my non-sand-throwing upbringing and
scold my three even though the rest of the beach continued to assault each
other. I got some strange looks, but come on, NOBODY like getting hit with
sand.
When Jason returned with the sunscreen, he leaned down and
said, “It’s not recommended that we swim at this beach. The salmonella count is
reaching a dangerous level.” Uh, what? I looked out to the boys frolicking in
the water, mouths gaping out as they splashed and jumped. All I could imagine
was poopy water flying into their smiling yell holes. I urged Jason to get them
out of the water as I looked for a less gross beach in the area. He responded,
“The damaged is probably already done. I’ll tell them we’re leaving in 15 minutes.
Plus they found a friend.” “Yeah, but he’s a sand thrower,” I replied.
When Jason came back from delivering the crappy news to the
boys, he said, “I told them that we can’t be swimming at this beach because of
high bacteria levels. Then the sand thrower said, ‘What do you mean we can’t
swim at this beach?’ I told him it was dangerous because of the level of
bacteria. He and the lady behind me looked concerned.” However, no one else
left the water. We proceeded to find a beach with almost no salmonella but
plenty of screaming.
I am a loud person. If you do not know me, then understand, I am
a yell-talker. I think it’s a mild case of voice emodulation which I passed on
to all three boys. Anyway, even I was astonished at the amount of yelling
happening at this beach. Babies of all ages were screaming and crying, older
kids were bellowing at their parents, parents and grandmothers were screeching
back. It was truly unbelievable, and I was a stay at home mom with three boys
under four. We went to all kinds of ridiculous shouty places, but this was
something special. I wish I could accurately relay all the super loud
conversations being had, but writing won’t do them justice. It’s more of an
in-person type of story.
However, there was one incident that was particularly
fascinating. A woman, her mother, and her four children arrived and sat
directly in front of me. The woman kept shouting at her mom that the children
wouldn’t come to her because they preferred the grandmother over herself
(probably because she scared them with her loud, angry voice). At one point, a
little boy about 14 months old had toddled back up to the grandmother, and the
mother pitched a fit. Samus, oblivious to all things around him, happened to be
standing there staring into the distance. The grandmother started shouting,
“Young man! Young man!” Although they were only a few feet apart, Samus had no
idea she was talking to him. After the grandmother's voice took on a pitchy,
frantic tone, Samus finally looked, and she said, “Young man, will you pick up
this here baby and take him down to his mama?” Samus looked at her like she was
completely insane. “He doesn’ bite. Jus pick him up under the arms like a cat
and take him down to his mama.” Although he appeared completely freaked out, he
did as he was asked and took the toddler down to his mother. Then he promptly
ran away. It was a fantastic show to watch.
After swimming, we returned to the camper and Jason whipped
up some delicious breakfast burritos. Wanting to get an early start, I broke
down the camp as Jason messed with something to do with the camper breaks. As I
finished up, I asked about the breaks. Apparently, the camper no longer had
them. Ugh. It was bound to happen sometime, after traveling over 10,000 miles
around the country, but it was still inconvenient. Not to mention horribly
dangerous.
We went to bed with the intention to get up early to find
someone to fix the breaks.
No comments:
Post a Comment