Son of a Beach

This past weekend my son “T” (as a reminder he is six years old) and I took a little excursion to the beach for a few days. “T” has a cousin, “H” that is just a little over a year younger than him who he loves to play with, and so happens to live at the coastal town where we were visiting this weekend. H’s parents had once lived in our hometown of Bakersfield, where summer days often exceed 100 degrees, but were lucky enough to have the ability to move to the beach a few years ago. Allowing their child to have the experience of growing up at the beach places them at the pinnacle of parental awesomeness. Even if they were to chop off H’s hands and feet, sew them in each other’s place, resulting in him having to walk on his hands (obviously covered with little hand shaped shoes) and picking his nose with a toe jam crusted foot appendage, they would still be awesome parents based upon their chosen location to raise their child.

When T and I arrived at the beach, we decided to meet H and his parents next to a local state campground where, a couple of months a year, monarch butterflies migrate through en masse and provide for some really cool insect viewing. For a few minutes, we all listened to a quaint little presentation on the monarch butterflies: the migration, their eating habits, life cycle, ect. At the end of the presentation from an excessively happy twenty year old park employee, she threw out the casual warning to watch out for butterflies in pairs on the ground so that they are not stepped on. Apparently, the butterflies find a mate, engage in some coital activity on the ground, and then fly up together into the trees. That is really a horrific thing to happen to the poor butterfly. There you are, caressing the antennae of your chosen mate, engaging in a little bit of the old “bumpin’ thorax” and bam! The sole of someone’s Nike Air Jordan flattens you and your partner beyond recognition. Although the saying is used symbolically when referring to the amorous act of love making, this heartless human has just given a literal meaning to the saying “Two individuals becoming one.”

After the kids became bored with butterflies, which happened in about 12 seconds, we made our way down a path to the beach where the kids could play for a while. As soon as we began walking down the little dirt road, both boys picked up huge pointed sticks and began swinging them around dangerously, endangering the optical orbs of every single passerby. These kids would have had a Vietcong punji stick expert impressed with their tiny, yet volatile, wooden weapon equipped hands. We finally made it down to the beach after a five to ten minute walk, and the kids were relatively behaved while playing. After about twenty minutes of frolicking in the sand and surf, T said “I have to go poop.” Why do children’s bathroom needs have to be so inconvenient? Couldn’t he have needed to go while we were by the butterfly exhibit where a bathroom was available? I informed T that we would need to walk back the butterfly park. There happened to be some large bushes in our vicinity, and T suggested evacuating his bowels behind a bush. (Yeah, great idea I thought. And what would he wipe with, a leaf? And wouldn’t it just be our luck to use a poison oak leaf. And I can tell you I had absolutely no plans to spend my weekend at the beach applying some soothing sphincter salve to my son’s burning, itching buttocks.) So for my own previously mentioned selfish reasons, and for the obvious reason that going out in public is just plain discourteous to other beach goers, I told T we would be making the walk back to the butterfly park. He agreed to this, and we made the trip back to the bathroom, all the while me asking with a not-so-well-disguised worrisome voice “Are you gonna make it? Are you going to be OK?” When we arrived back at the bathroom, I deduced from the quizzical expression on my son’s face that he had never used an outhouse-type toilet. For the porta-potty virgin, and even for a veteran user, the outhouse can be one of the most disturbing and traumatic experiences a human can endure. T went inside by himself, and came back out after a nanosecond, telling me how bad the bathroom stunk. T then quickly, and adamantly, told me he did not need to go to the bathroom. I spent the next 1-2 minutes telling him how I knew he need to go, and that I knew it was not fun to use that type of bathroom, but that if he just hurried we could get back to playing with H. I am not proud to say it, but I even went so far as to tell T how I would be very upset with him if he had an involuntary fecal incident in his pants, given that he had the opportunity to use the restroom. No matter what I said, T maintained that the urge to use the facilities had magically disappeared. So we made our way back, and despite the fact that I know he had to be placing himself at risk of serious intestinal damage by way of his unrelenting rectum and his resulting impacted colon, he spent the next two hours not saying a word about needing to go to the bathroom.

Later in the day, the boys found a fifteen foot wide creek feeding into the ocean. Neither child was outfitted in “water clothing” or shoes, and were instructed repeatedly not to get in, or play to closely to the water. H found a large piece of bark and despite a vehement objection from T, who wanted to play with the bark, deftly tossed the piece of bark in the creek far out of the reach of either child. T, AKA Mini MacGyver, got the ingenious idea of pulling two long plant vines out of the ground and crafted a long “rescue rope” by knotting the two pieces of vegetation together. In an attempt to retrieve the piece of bark, T then proceeded to begin casting his line into the creek with the form of a finalist in the Bass Master’s Fishing Derby Championship. Unfortunately, it took only one overzealous torque of the shoulder and flick of the wrist, combined with some slippery footing, to send T tumbling face first into the murky, sandy water soaking every bit of his person. With no extra clothes to change into, that fateful fall into the water ended our day playing with H. As T showered that afternoon, attempting to rid himself of every remaining grainy particle that had nestled in his bodily crevasses, I realized that the old saying “Where the sun don’t shine” should have a parallel sister maxim, “Where the sand settles.”