Countdown to Beach-Land (part two of a series)
I have been super distracted this week. See, the reason I’ve been telling you about these adventures in the southern coast of Maine is that we’re heading there this weekend. Kate’s even coming up from Texas for the event. So awesome!
So, I’ll be away the beginning of next week, completely out of touch with the internet. So don’t expect any updates for the first part of the week. It’ll be just like this week was, except I’ll have an excuse!
Anyway, back to the history…
Two Years Ago
Finally! We had enough vacation days! (Okay, I had enough vacation days, and Mike had just gotten laid off, but you know, take the good with the bad.) We were totally going to spend the entire week on the beach. Bit of a downer, though, because Kate just graduated and she didn’t have many vacation days to spare, so she would only be there a couple days. I swear, some day, we’ll all be there for the whole week. Some day.
I had just gotten my new car, and I was pretty excited about it. So, in my haste, I offered to drive. This is good, and everything, because I like driving, but I got us lost. Who’s surprised?
This was an Olympic year, which is always awesome. I truly and dearly love the Olympics. Given the opportunity, I’d watch just about every event. And I was given the opportunity that year, because we were on vacation through the heart of it. We definitely went to the beach, but probably not as much as usual. There was swimming and tennis and diving and running and shooting and all kinds of really awesome sports to watch! Lunch at the house often lasted a couple hours, while we watched a match or event or qualifier. And when it rained, we didn’t mind as much, because the Olympics were on!
This was also the year that Mike and I totally made a run for getting as many tickets as possible from the arcade down in Old Orchard. We found machines that gave you seventy tickets if you landed the game in just the right way. We played skee ball and practiced until our arms practically (and perhaps literally… Mike does have a bit of a problem with dislocated shoulders) fell out of their sockets. It was awesome.
At the end of the week, we had amassed this huge pile of tickets that we had to carry around in all kinds of pockets. I think we both had cargo pants on when we went back to redeem for prizes. This was the auspicious beginning of our shot glass collection. Our piles of quarters bought us tickets and fun, and our piles of tickets bought us six… or maybe eight… shot glasses. We got them in matching pairs, and enjoy their use still.
But when we had finished selecting our prizes, we still had a pretty good number of tickets left. When I was a kid, at places like Chuck E. Cheeses, the tickets were taken at their value and split and split again until every last one was used. But as an adult (sort of) I had no use for miniature yo-yos that don’t come back, nor glow-in-the-dark jelly bracelets. So, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a couple kids and a dad. The older kid was toting a long string of tickets that he had won on his own accord. You could see it in his eyes – he was proud. The younger one, however, was studying the five tickets in her hands, while her dad carried her up to the counter to see what she could get with them. It seemed obvious. I asked her if she would like some more tickets, and her eyes got pretty big. She seemed to be the kind of kid who knew she wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers, so I wasn’t insulted when she didn’t respond. I handed her maybe 40 or 50 tickets, still far less than her brother had amassed, but she grinned as her father thanked me.
We carried the shot glasses back in those cargo pockets.
Last Year
Well, you might think that this was the year we finally all got to be there for the whole week. Nope. Mike had just gotten a new job (no, he wasn’t jobless for that whole year, he got a job just after we got back the year before, but it was soul sucking and he couldn’t wait to leave, so the opportunity to move made for an obvious choice), so once again, we were shy vacation days.
We still did have a lot of fun, though. We stayed a couple days more than the weekend, and definitely had our dinner out at the Japanese place. Unfortunately, though, Kate was also short a bit on vacation, or had to go to someone’s wedding, or… something. In any case, she didn’t get up to Maine until, apparently, just an hour after we’d left.
Our time there was relaxing but uneventful. We (meaning Mike, his parents, and I) took a walk all the way down the beach to Old Orchard to share Pier French Fries (which aren’t actually on the pier anymore – don’t buy the ones on the pier, go off-pier just a block, and that’s what you’re actually looking for). I totally almost went swimming (the water up there is so cold!), but wimped out only two feet deep. And of course, there was bocce to be played.
I can’t believe I forgot to mention the bocce ball sooner! Barely a day goes by at the beach in Maine where we don’t play a bit of bocce. I’ve had to adapt myself to these crazy people’s “beach rules” from my upbringing around the standard grass variety. My ability to backspin a ball and plop it straight down ten to twenty feet in front of me holds no value when the pallina is more like forty yards away. Mike’s family, all avid golfers, tend to call those “par fives” while when I’m in control of the pallina, I only throw “par threes.” But no matter. Once I gain control, I can run for quite a while before someone spocks me out from my lead. Of course, that always happens. And I’m no good at aiming over long distances of sloped damp sand. I think I’ve maybe won once.
But the best story of last year did not come from us. It came from Kate. Their uncle comes to join the beach extravaganza most years, as he’s a school teacher and has the summers off. He and Kate, along with Kate’s parents, had gone to a hypnotist show out in Old Orchard. Somehow, Wally and Kate managed to get themselves volunteered as victims. So, they joined the group.
Apparently, so says Wally, Kate had laughed (probably because the hypnotist told her that something funny was happening), and her laugh had snapped him out of it. So, he was ushered back to his seat, where he witnessed something that I really wish I hadn’t missed. The hypnotist got Kate to sing. In front of people. That were watching her. (But of course she didn’t know this; she was in a created world in her brain.)
Apparently, to this day, a certain Aretha Franklin tune plays in her head, more or less constantly.
This Year
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