16 March 2010

shells

I am possibly going to have to move to the coast, because when I go there, I cannot leave. I stand on the shore, mesmerized by the waves and the light, until it gets dark and I freeze right through and everyone else is pacing at the car waiting for me.

I have concluded that there are two types of beach people: the walkers and the sitters. I am a walker through and through. I get itchy when I leave the house with a group of people and fifty meters down the beach they want to sit and, and, I don't know. What do they do? They just sit there. Meanwhile, I will walk until I run out of beach.

Everyone at the beach this weekend was a sitter except S. and me, so we left them sitting on a driftwood tree and went off walking to the end of the beach ourselves. It was a good move, because, man, we are hilarious. Surely we are funnier than those other people sitting on their silly log somewhere back on the beach.

We raced each other like five-year-olds to get to the white backs of shells sticking out of the sand, a game that S.'s mom thought up last summer on the church campout.

"I can't crush them," S. complained.

"You have to look for more rounded ones," I said. "Find the ones that stick further out of the ground. They crush better."

"I think I just don't weigh enough," she said.

"Are you saying that I'm fat?" I asked, and I shoved her into the ocean. As if we were back in college, back when everything was unbearably funny, we bent over and laughed until our stomachs were sore.

No comments: