No Day At The Beach

by Sean Purcell

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

Yesterday was no day at the beach.  Okay, technically I suppose you could twist the facts around and put a major league, curve ball spin on it and call it a day at the beach.  You know, if you want to get hung up on little details like how I spent the entire day at the beach.  I packed up my two boys, an ice chest full of Cheetos and one large cantaloupe.  (I didn’t bring a knife and apparently you don’t eat those things like an apple, so I returned with one empty ice chest and one large cantaloupe.)  I met up with my good friend and occasional confessor Brian Brady and his lovely daughter.  We were later joined by his wife, whom I’ll just call Mrs. Lance Armstrong Brady for this story, and we spent an entire, glorious day at the beach.  But other than that, yesterday was no day at the beach.  Yeah, okay, I see your point.  Put it this way, it wasn’t a typical day at the beach.

For me, a typical day at the beach would mainly involve long discussions with Brian on solving the world’s problems (ask us sometime… we’ve got the whole thing whittled down to a small pamphlet) and occasionally testing the sandy hardness of the ocean floor by falling off my boogie board.  (This is all done purposefully and as part of my larger interest in oceanography.  I could ride a wave on a boogie board if I wanted to…)  Sometimes, just to spice things up, I see how long I can hold in my gut without passing out in front of an attractive, bikini-clad woman.  They usually do a surprisingly good job of pretending to not even notice me, but we’re so close to Hollywood I assume most of them are just acting…  Anyway, that’s a typical day at the beach for me.  But not yesterday.  Yesterday I was distracted by a gigantic hole.  Yes, a hole… in the sand.  Like I said: not your typical day at the beach.

My two boys and Brian’s daughter spent a good chunk of their morning – when they weren’t out on boogie boards catching waves and staying upright, as if that’s the only way to ride one of those things – digging a hole.  I know, that probably doesn’t sound like much fun, but you have to trust me: catching waves on a boogie board can be fun.  In any case, they dug themselves a pretty good hole.  It was big and deep and had a nice groove cut toward the ocean.  Once the tide came in, they’d have themselves a nice little hot tub just made for three.  (I actually overheard one of them… okay, it was one of my boys, say something about turning it into a jacuzzi.  I’m not sure how they planned on creating bubbles, but I figure what I don’t know won’t hurt me.)

Sure enough, as the tide came in all their hard work started to pay off.  At first there was only a little water, but it was obvious that before long they’d have a first rate hot tub.  It was about this time I began to notice other boys and girls approach; as time passed more and more came until we had a regular Hole in the Beach Gang.  They thought this was the neatest thing they’d ever seen and soon began to splash in the hole too.  It didn’t occur to any of them to ask if they could play in the slowly filling “hot tub.”  I guess they figured holes were just something that appeared at the beach without any work; kind of a no-cost benefit they were all entitled to play in and enjoy.  Pretty soon, my boys and Brian’s daughter came over to us and pointed out that they weren’t getting to play in the hot tub they’d created because there were “all these kids in there who didn’t even help build it!”  I have to say I was shocked, shocked to learn my kids possessed a sense of ownership over this hole.  Why?  Because they got there early?  Because they worked long and hard on it?  Is that any kind of a justification for not sharing it with kids who were busy playing video games all morning and only stumbled into the hole on their way to the ice cream stand?  Being a philosopher, I sat down to formulate a deeply moving response to our children’s dilemma.  Brian on the other hand, ever the pragmatist, just looked at them  and said: “Life’s tough. Wear a helment,” and sent them off to clear jelly fish so he could enter the water for a bit.

I stayed and watched “the hole” though.  I’d become intrigued and I’m glad I did because the most interesting thing happened.  The original three creators of the hole, once they realized they weren’t going to be able to enjoy what they’d built, wandered off to find new adventures.  (At least, I think that’s what they did.  Look, it’s a big crowded beach surrounded by pounding surf and occasional rip tides.  It’s not like I can keep an eye on them every minute…)  The others though, the ones who jumped with both feet into the hole they didn’t create, they stayed and they played and they made that hole their own.  But a very strange thing began to happen.  With each surge of ocean water came a large deposit of sand and the hole became less and less of a hole (and less fun) as it filled with water. 

Now here’s the really odd part: the kids all just looked at each other as it was happening.  They knew their hole was de-holing (don’t bother looking it up, I promise you it’s a word), but they didn’t know what to do about it.  The various shovels and buckets originally used to create the hole were all still there, lying on the outer edge, but no one thought to grab a shovel and contribute.  They just kept playing in less and less water, till one by one they began drifting away.  Maybe some found another magically appearing hole they could take as their own.  I imagined others discovering a blanket spread with hot dogs and chips… and helping themselves to the magic of a free lunch.  It wouldn’t surprise me if one or two went off in search of our three kids – the original builders of the hole – to complain about how it wasn’t built big enough and didn’t last long enough.  (I don’t know for sure where any of them went because that would have required me getting up out of my beach chair and I was, at that particular moment, testing another one of my scientific theories about compression of sand under extremely heavy loads.)

Toward the end of the day, my sons and Brian’s daughter came back around and looked at the hole, or rather: what was once a hole.  It was pretty filled in and the sides had crumbled under the weight of so many kids.  Their shovels and buckets were strewn about.  I asked if they were going to build another hole and they shook their heads no.  “What’s the point?” my older son asked.  “Yeah,” my younger son chimed in, “if we do, we won’t get to play in it anyway.”  Brian’s daughter summed it up, saying: “I think our hole digging days are over.  We did all the work, but someone else got all the fun.”  Kids say the funniest things, don’t they?

As we broke down the tents and packed the tools and tried to carry as much sand back to my recently detailed car as possible, I remember thinking to myself: I sure hope these little guys enjoyed themselves today, despite what happened with their hole.  And I certainly hope they’re not assimilating this one-time episode into any sort of large-scale, world view.  Deep down I hope that by the time they become adults they can look back on this day and say: “Life is no day at the beach.”  Just in case though… wear a helmet.

The Hole in the Beach Gang