Chicken Soup for the Beach Lover's Soul Read Online Free PDF Page B

to ride back to the beach; sand to play games in; and seclusion, in the midst of a crowd, that promoted freedom of the mind, body, and spirit. The beaches were much smaller when I was a kid, so they were more crowded than today. That didn’t matter. We still played running bases with a tennis ball and tried to tag the runner out before he reached base. Errant throws usually ended up on a sunbather’s blanket, sometimes hitting the person, but that wasn’t my problem. I had to retrieve the ball, and in my haste to do so, I would deposit unwanted sand on their blanket and further annoy the sun worshiper. If I got the base runner out, it was worth the verbal abuse. If the sunbather came after us we hightailed it down to the water, jumped in, and had a catch skimming the ball along the surface of the water.
    We also built intricate sand castles along the water’s edge with protective walls to keep the water away from our castle. As the tide came in, we built bigger protective walls, but we always lost the battle. It didn’t matter. We just moved on to another game.
    The beach also provided us with a free sauna. It was the sun-warmed sand to flop on and heat up a body made cold by the ocean. In the process it changed those wrinkled fingers back to normal and shed the body of all the goose bumps collected from an hour of energized horseplay in the ocean. It turned blue lips pink again, a signal that it was time to leave the warmth of the sand, run to my ocean, and dive in. Experience guided us so that we reached the right speed, choose our perfect wave, and dove over it with the grace and composure of a carefree dolphin.
    Finally, it was a chance for me to attack my buddies in the water, without making it obvious, by going beneath the surface and pulling them under and then swimming away. The best game of all was the piggyback fights in waist-high water with as many kids as were willing to risk it. We would attack the enemy and dethrone the opponent from the shoulders of his carrier. The last team standing was the tired victor.
    Fun, but dangerous, was skimming. One would throw a round, thin board along the surface of extremely shallow water as it reached the beach. Jumping on the board we would try to maintain our standing position as we skimmed along the surface of the water. If you lost your balance or if the front edge of the board dug in the sand you would be sent flying totally out of control. It was worth the challenge and the danger.
    But riding the waves was my favorite fun thing to do. Today boards are used, but when I was a youngster you used your body as the board. We perfected the art of selecting the “perfect wave” and riding it for several hundred feet, right up onto the dry beach. We mastered the ability to change directions at the last split second. To this day I can still remember the panicked look on the bathers’ faces as we just skimmed by them, much to our enjoyment and much to their fright. It was the high of the day to end up on the dry beach. I would lay there savoring my victory for a few moments before getting up and charging into the water again to conquer another wave. It was always just “one more wave” that got me in trouble as I rushed home—wet, barefooted, and full of sand—trying to beat Mom’s five o’clock deadline for supper.
    As with everything in life, there was a downside to living on the summer beach. Sunburns, blowing sand, other bratty kids kicking sand on you, and the dangers of rip tides carrying you out to sea or waves slamming you into the ocean bottom were a few. But the worst intrusion was people invading the serenity of my existence as I dozed off while lying on the beach with the warm sand contoured around my body and my mind full of the fantasies of my own summer beach.
    To me, the beach is everything good, whether you are seventeen or in your seventies, as I am now. In my later years I find that it still draws me into its