When I used to go to the beach I generally took a towel along, and a blanket, especially if a girl was involved. For some reason girls used to like sitting on blankets on the beach. That has all changed, based on my observations of beachgoers and comers. Beach sitting now requires chairs.
Nowadays many beachgoers push huge contraptions with big fat wheels, which I guess makes them easier to push or pull through the sand. Usually, a few folding chairs hang about on special racks, and other beach paraphernalia is crammed inside the carts. Large coolers and beach umbrellas are not uncommon. This seems like way too much trouble for something as mundane as going to the beach, when a towel and a pair of flip-flops pretty much fill the bill. Yes, you can carry a small cooler if you have a penchant for real sandwiches. I never liked eating or drinking anything on the beach because of the sand that invaded everything, especially on windy days, which meant most of the time.
I went to the beach for one primary purpose, which was to go in the ocean, whether swimming or surfing. The secondary and just as important purpose was to watch and possibly meet, girls. Unfortunately, not as many of them spent nearly as much time in the water as I, so at times I found myself sitting on a blanket with one or more of them. Those were the only times I endured sitting there in the hot sun. Every five minutes or so I generally asked if she or they were ready to go in the water.
Girls liked to sunbathe, which I consider a misnomer. Like, how can you take a bath in the sun, and why would you want to? The sun is hot, especially without water to cool you off. And you can get a nice tan while in the ocean. You can even get sunburn, or worse yet, sunburn poisoning, so I found out.
Yes, I got sunburned on my shoulders and figured I could still go to the beach the next day as long as I wore a tee shirt. I was right, except that the shirt didn’t prevent exacerbation of the problem. My shoulders sort of resembled a pizza when the cheese bubbles up, except it wasn’t cheese. I also discovered that shirts have a way of sticking to blisters, which made it less than fun to take it off. Whenever I see people who resemble cooked lobsters coming off the beach I pity them.
This past summer we went to Peggy’s Crab House, inside Keenan’s Irish Pub, naively thinking the place would be selling crabs. What were we thinking? They were selling lots of beer and other drinks, but no crabs. Apparently they only sell crabs a couple of days out of the week, so the name of the place is rather confusing. It’s sort of like going to Nathan’s and they’re not selling hot dogs that day. I don’t know what the deal is, but we went into a food place on the boardwalk that has an enormous lighted Coca-Cola sign overhead. This thing has to be six or eight feet tall! When we ordered Cokes they said they only have Pepsi products. . . A few years ago we went to a DQ in Waynesboro, Georgia (don’t go there) and my wife ordered a chocolate cone dipped in chocolate. They gave her a vanilla cone dipped in chocolate and told us they don’t have chocolate ice cream! I have since checked with other DQ’s and all of them are supposed to have chocolate.
Remember the old adage, “The customer is always right?” Has anyone noticed that it has changed in recent years to, “The customer is usually wrong, and if you don’t like it, go somewhere else?” That’s not as true with the big chain stores, but the smaller independent stores are often run by people who seem to not care whether or not you patronize the place.
I had two run-ins with a little Italian restaurant that serves mediocre, but okay food. After I had gone there several times, he asked me for ID when I used a debit card. He then grabbed a bunch of supposedly unpaid receipts and waved them in my face. I paid with cash and left. About a year or so later we ordered a pepperoni pizza to be delivered. It came without the pepperoni. We called and he said he would send us the right one. The delivery person arrived with the pizza and a note from the store owner stating that we owed another $2.50 and he wanted the original pizza back. We just paid for the new pizza, but this place will NEVER get another dime of my money.
Does anyone else get bothered by those pop-up ads that are in your face? Now, some of them take up the entire screen and many of them flash incessantly. I would never, ever buy whatever it is these places are selling.
For years I have loved watching college football, but it’s getting more and more tiresome to watch a game. First there’s all the constant blabbering by the “analysts,” who tell you everything you never wanted to know, and often miss important items in the game. Who cares if the quarterback’s uncle used to go duck hunting with the cousin of an NFL player? It used to be that a completed pass was a completed pass, a fumble was a fumble, and the ground could not cause a fumble. With instant replay and review, things got much more complicated. Now, to determine whether or not the player fumbled they run the play back in slow motion and the announcers say, “See? The fingernail on his left pinky touched a blade of grass (or artificial turf) before the ball came out! That’s not a fumble!”
Pass catching is even more complicated because if a player catches the ball and goes down he must be careful to cradle the ball so it never touches the turf. What nonsense! And then there’s the deal about whether or not he caught it in bounds. “Look!” they’ll say, “His left toe touched the sideline but his right foot was in bounds, but I’m not sure that he had complete control of the football when his left foot hit the ground. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
Even worse is evaluating whether or not a player actually scored a touchdown. It used to be pretty cut and dried. If the runner or receiver ended up in the end zone with the football it was a touchdown. Now they have this imaginary vertical plane, and if any part of the football crosses that plane, even if for a nanosecond, it’s ruled a touchdown. “Well, if you watch this ultra slow macro view it appears that one of the laces may have broken the plane, so I think it’s going to be ruled a touchdown,” they inform us.
Even instant review doesn’t always work. I was watching a game where the team appeared to get a first down but the ball spot made it short of the line. The coach challenged the spot and was correct; the player had made the first down. The official announced that the ball would be respotted, but he put it back where it was, short of the first down. As we used to say in the Navy, “I’m not sure what the purpose of this drill was. . .”
They could eliminate a lot of this confusion with some simple rules changes. If a player catches the ball it’s a catch. Duh! If he landed with a foot inbounds it shouldn’t matter whether or not he had control of the ball at that point, because that’s subjective anyway. With respect to fumbles, the rule should probably be that the ground cannot cause a fumble (as is the supposed present rule) but if the player had a knee on the ground when the ball came out it should be a fumble. And finally, touchdowns should require that the football be in the end zone for, say, three seconds. Instead of crossing this imaginary vertical plane, the ball should have to be in the player’s possession, either on the ground or with both feet in the end zone.
The best thing they could do, however, is to give you the option of hearing the game noise without the constant chattering of the so-called experts. I don’t care what could have happened had this guy caught that pass or if the team hadn’t been penalized, or if so-and-so weren’t out with an injury. Nor do I care that a team has won 20 games out of 26 when a full moon falls on the second Friday of the month, but maybe some people do.