Just a Crappy Day at the Beach

Today was day one of beach trip number two. Number two was a theme for the day, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Yesterday, we drove here to Garden City, near Myrtle Beach, from our home in the upstate of South Carolina: the two kids, the husband, the hamster, and me. The cats don’t much care for car rides and therefore had to stay home, where they will engage in all sorts of mischief while we are gone, including knocking over their food container, chasing each other all over the house while simultaneously scratching the hardwood floors, and chewing up all the house plants and puking them up on the scratched hardwood floors. The hamster was a last minute packing decision, based on my younger daughter S’s big watery puppy dog eyes and the fact that we had room for his cage in the back seat. It turns out that hamsters don’t really much care for car rides either. Maximus, the dwarf hamster, hiccuped vomity burps for the rest of the night. If you Google “hamster smells like vomit,” you will end up wondering if you should take the rodent to the emergency vet clinic or if he will be dead in his cage by dawn’s early light.

Maximus was fine this morning, feeling frisky and biting anything that was shoved in his face, especially fingers and lips. S felt confident that he would survive, so we got all sunscreened, grabbed our chairs and buckets and books, and walked out to the beach. My husband and older daughter, E, were not ready to leave the confines of the 800 square foot condo, what with the pleasures of unmade beds and iPads calling them, so S and I were solo. We half-heartedly made wet sand castles and jumped waves until our mouths and eyes were salt rimmed and burning. My spouse came out, and we all went back in the water. We waded to about our knees when a wayward jellyfish floated close enough to us to make all of us run back to our chairs, as if it could consciously chase after us and not just bob along with the tide.

E chose that moment to join us on the sand, right when we decided we had enough of the grainy stuff, so we left the beach and went up to the pool. About twenty rednecks and their inbred offspring were screaming and splashing around in it, so E decided she would rather go back to the condo. I walked with her because I had to pee; the jellyfish sighting thwarted my plans of answering the call of nature while wave jumping. As we walked past the stairwell towards the back of the building, the most horrible stench wafted up, assaulting our nostrils with a smell so bad we both started gagging. It wasn’t the kind of smell you wanted to smell again to determine its origin. It was the kind of smell that made you wonder if someone’s grandma had been missing for a few weeks, only they forgot to check the family vacation home.

After using the facilities and smelling the Febreze spray to cleanse my nasal palette, I walked back to the pool alone, this time open-mouth breathing. When I made it past the stairwell again, I discovered the source of the foul stink. On the concrete, under the stairs, was a humongous turd, a turd so big there was no doubt it was not a cat’s or dog’s or even a child’s. That thing was man-sized, and from the looks of it, was a long time coming.

I appreciate the fact that when you gotta go, you gotta go. But the stairwell? It’s not a port-a-potty, or a public restroom, or even a bush. It’s the stairwell. People walk up and down the stairs to get to their units. In fact, all the condos have two toilets, which meant that whoever the public crapper was had access to not one but two separate commodes in which to lay that pipe. I know, I know, walking up the stairs is such a chore, especially when there is so much fun to be had at the beach. Or when you have to take a dump really badly.

When I got back to the pool, my husband decided he had had enough of the sun and went inside to get some lunch. I sat on a lounge chair watching the redneck children throw water balloons in the pool and yell at each other in some bastardized version of the Queen’s tongue. S decided that she was done as well, so we rushed past the poop and back to our unit.

We dined on frozen food and sandwiches and organic strawberries, fed tiny bits of romaine to Maximus, scanned the crappy cable channels, and generally got on each other’s nerves until we were ready to attempt another jaunt down to the sand. After reapplying sunscreen and refreshing the water bottle, we walked back outside.

Luckily, someone had kindly cleaned up the human waste, although I doubt it was its owner, but at least the sun-baked excrement and the resulting stench had cleared up. When we got back to our chairs, we realized the tide had come in faster than we expected it, so we had to pick up all of our stuff and move it back twenty paces. We settled in the chairs but then realized that the wind had also come in, so we had to reposition ourselves with our backs to the gusts. That way the stinging sand could embed itself in our scalps instead of our eyes.

When we were finally comfortable, we heard the unmistakable sound of summer: thunder. Loud, booming cannon fire thunder. The kind of thunder that makes you scream like a little girl. We sat still, just in case we heard wrong, but we hadn’t. The thunder boomed again, louder this time, and when we looked towards the building, we could see massive gray clouds sneaking up behind it.

We packed up everything. I grabbed the beach bag and a chair. My husband got his cup and the other chairs. S bent down to grab the buckets and shovels while E picked up the beach umbrella. Unfortunately, they stood up at the same time, and E clocked S right above her left eye with the sandy end, resulting in tears from both of them. By the time we hosed off, stacked the chairs by the door, and fought over who could take the first shower, the thunder had stopped.

I’d call that a successful first day at the beach, wouldn’t you?