Beach Day Craziness

Each beach day usually brings a host of characters, and my beach day with Jaimee and Lily was no different. We spent our hours in the water because the sun was relentless, and two minutes of sitting on the sand had the sweat dripping down my face, mingling with the sunscreen and damaging my eyesight. It was better in the water.

As we floated, a boat suddenly began honking, and we turned to watch it travel past the buoy, eventually running right up on to the shore. In the sand. What? I've never seen a boat come past the buoys and certainly never run ashore. The boat then reversed, turned, went out past the buoys, turned, and returned honking for those in the water to move. This went on as the boat continued moving in a pattern, much like one mowing a lawn.

The water was full of people, and when the honking would commence, those in direct sight would move to the right or to the left, but the problem was that the boat couldn't seem to decide how to straighten itself out so when people would move they would have to move again once the boat decided on its course.

We also worried about those who ventured out toward the buoys where there was a sandbar, a favorite for beachgoers looking for sand dollars. We thought at first that the boat had almost snapped the head off of a man floating between two buoys, but then as the boat-made waves rolled, we decided it wasn't human. Still, the boat and its drive pattern were not precisely what I would call safe on a summer beach day.

I commented loudly. Various scenarios were offered by multiple people floating by. "They must be picking up someone," "They are having engine trouble," and "They are nuts!" My favorite was from a middle-aged woman with a colored noodle shoved under her armpits carrying a Pepsi can that she held aloft.

Pepsi Woman: "There are sharks. They are letting us know to be careful. From the sharks out there."

High on the side under the captain's seat were letters in sizeable black lettering spelling out SURVEY. Lower on the side of the boat, in the middle, was a logo that read Hyatt Survey. Further, to the edge of the boat was the name; Pamela Anne. A man in large white sunglasses suggested they were a survey company and that he wasn't concerned about sharks. He was from Bosnia, and we spent half an hour hearing his journey to America, his following of his girlfriend, now his wife, to Fargo, South Dakota, and his vacationing here every summer. Nice man. We agreed sharks were not what the boat was here for.

Apparently, others were annoyed about the boat because pretty soon, two Sheriff deputies arrived in their official sheriff dune buggy. They pointed to the boat, got on the phone, followed it down the beach for a bit, and eventually were surrounded by people offering up, I'm sure, hopeful advice. Pepsi Woman floated on a noodle under her pits, Pepsi still in her hand. I commented to Jaimee and Lily that we would soon know the scoop once PW floated back out to us. Sure enough, out she came.

Me: "So, fill us in on the scoop."

PW: "I'm heading out there now."

Me: "No, on the scoop from the Sheriff's deputies. I saw you talking to them. Give us the low-down."

PW: "Oh, I know all of the deputies. My kids know all of the deputies. From the time they found my husband hanging dead in our backyard. We know all the Sheriff's deputies."

Me: "Okay...uh, well, we've heard quite a few stories today out here on the water, and while that one would top the list, I'm more interested in what the Sheriff had to say. You know about the boat?"

PW: "The sharks were last week. They're here for the stranded manatee and baby dolphin out there. They've got a rope, and they're letting people know."

Uh? Manatee hanging in the Gulf with a baby dolphin? Not likely, but my writer's imagination smelled a book. If only Pepsi Woman had moved on past us.

PW: "I'm heading out there now to get a look at it."

Me: "The stranded manatee?"

PW: "I'll go take a look. Out there on that..what is it called?"

Me: "The sandbar?"

PW: "I'll check it out."

She yelled at her grandkids to stay, and off she traveled, the noodle still under the pits, her Pepsi can above the water. I mentioned to Jaimee that I thought Pepsi was not the liquid currently in that can and that I hoped she knew that it wasn't a bar where she could refresh whatever was in there. We watched her float out to the bobbing thing in the water between the two buoy markers.

Her grandkids began hollering. Loudly.

Them: "NANA! NANA!"

Boy: "COME BACK! NANA, COME BACK."

Over and over and over again, they yelled. We were between them, and suffice it to say, PW didn't hear the grandkids. I finally got tired of the shouting and suggested, maybe a bit groucher than I should've considering their young ages, say 7-10 years old, that they save their breath as she couldn't hear and she would be back when she was finished checking out whatever had sent her out there. They stopped shouting. She went to the sandbar, got a tad close to whatever bobbed out there, shouted to her grandkids, and returned.

Jaimee: "So, what was it? A baby dolphin?"

PW: "A skull."

Jaimee: "A skull? A human skull?"

PW: "A skull bobbing out there. The rope goes right through its eye socket."

Jaimee: "What?"

PW: "Right through the eye socket. The rope. I was right there. Looked it straight in the eyes. Saw it for myself. We were this close. Face to face. I stared it right in the eye."

Jaimee: "The one with the rope through it?"

PW: "And I did it all alone. That guy was supposed to go out with me, but he chickened out. I went out. It's a skull."

She then floated past us to the grandkids, and we didn't see her again. Thank god. Lily flagged down our Bosnia friend who was out swimming by the thing, and he told us it was a joke. Someone had put a hat on a head--or a skull. Jaimee was beside herself, and I was laughing so hard I was peeing. I'm used to this nonsense on beach days, but Jaimee... Well, she had to go out there and look for herself.

We ventured out, the three of us, to investigate the skull/dolphin/manatee/hat. Turned out instead to be a buoy, minus the long white marker. My guess is the marker fell off, leaving behind the floatation portion of the buoy tied to a rope and covered in barnacles. A letdown for sure, but hey, it sure will give Jaimee something to blog about on this vacation.