The coast is unclear

Rick Melén

Life is no day at the beach, sometimes even when you spend a day at the beach.

But here at our home away from home in Ocean City, Md., it's only 15 minutes away. And the beach is clean, free and enticing. I schlepped so much stuff from the car I looked like Jed Clampett's car moving to Beverly Hills. Of course, Jed Clampett struck oil and I only struck my foot when I dropped my beach chair on it.

I feel better when I see a guy pulling a huge wagon with all his children's crap in it, and the poor guy looks like a beaten dog, sweating and huffing and puffing. Well, maybe he wasn't puffing. I don't remember ever asking my wife if she wanted to have children. I just glanced at her during these times with a look that said, "Even though I got only a 425 on my Math SAT score, I've done a complicated calculus just now in my head that factors in how much it's going to cost monetarily to have a child, including college, toys and food (for clothing the younger one can wear hand-me-downs and the older can wear hand-me-ups), the cost in premature aging due to worrying about their health, social media and anti-social media, weighed against the amount of times they will call us when we get old and money saved by them mowing the lawn," and her look said, "Me, too," and no more was said on the subject.

Once we settle in, I take in the surroundings. The two girls next to us at the beach went into the water for about 30 seconds and came right back out. "Why is nobody in the water?" I asked. "Jellyfish. The people who just left all got stung."

"Oh yeah? I heard they like the warm water. I guess they're seasonal. The jellyfish, not the people."

That's when my wife whispered to me, "Rick, leave the poor ladies alone. You're like those guys on those commercials that can't help acting like their parents."

And from that moment on, I pictured myself in that commercial, as my imaginary conversation continued. "Hey girls, don't look now but I thought I saw a peanut butter fish swim by! All you need now is a bread fish and you're going to have quite the sandwich!"

I remember hearing an old wives' tale that urine eases the sting of a jellyfish encounter. If there are no restroom facilities at your beach, getting stung by a jellyfish may be your only option.

By the way, I hope the current batch of wives that are getting older are also getting wiser, so that there can always be new old wives' tales. By the time they're in their 60s and 70s, I want to hear their daughters say things like, "My mother always used to tell me, if your cellphone gets a virus, just soak it in a mixture of vinegar and sugar-water."

"Oh yeah? The phone?"

"No, the virus."

My observational skills are uncanny: "Those are a couple healthy girls, right there," I observe.

"Healthy? What do you actually mean by healthy?" My wife asks.

"I'm just saying, they have that corn-fed look to them."

"You've been eating corn all your life, and look at you, you're a complete mess." It's true, I'm not the greatest advertisement for corn.

There's so much skin on display at the beach, I notice everyone's vapid tattoos. "Another butterfly tattoo," I mused. "I sincerely doubt that a butterfly would go around with a human tattoo, if butterflies could get a tattoo. Myself? I'd get a caterpillar tattoo, and tell people to just be patient."

Sometimes I don't think my wife is paying attention, I guess maybe I should talk louder, but I'm afraid they'll hear me. The girls, not the butterflies.

A plane goes by with a banner in tow that says, "Two-Passenger Bi-Plane Rides!" And I wonder about that, since I'm left alone with my thoughts, since I have no one to talk to, since my wife is pretending to be asleep. She's so good at it that she's able to feign convincing rapid eye movements. I talk in my sleep sometimes, so I consider dozing off myself so we can continue the conversation that way.

The plane towing the banner looks so old, laboring against the wind, I consider that it might be the bi-plane you get to ride in. Anyway, I'm not so sure it's such a treat to ride in an aircraft that is technologically archaic. "Comb the Deeps in a Wooden Submarine From the Civil War!" "Cruise the Arctic in an Exact Replica of the Titanic!" "Let Our Budget-Friendly Leeches Perform Your Open Heart Surgery!"

A trip to the beach for me is non-stop observational therapy. By analyzing the behavior of others, we can learn much about ourselves. But now I'd like to get back to my commercial, the one where people can't help behaving like their parents.

"Hey, kid," I say, "that's no way to make a sand castle. You're never going to defend the gatehouse properly unless you have four towers and an inner curtain wall. Let me see that pail. Go get some water, we're going to need a moat. Grab that kid's bucket when his mom's not looking."

Join Rick and No Options at AJ's Grill in Yorktown, Saturday, Aug. 29, and at the Yorktown Grange Fair on Sunday, Sept. 13, at 4 p.m. Say hello at rlife8@hotmail.com.