Home again
The Smelmooo and I are back from our week at the beach, which was lazy and relaxing and filled with mostly good weather. We were ready to come home, though, largely because we both missed our Tucker so much; it made us so happy to pick him up from the puppy resort and to hear that he'd been a good dog (although the salt water taffy we brought for the staff there might have helped erase their memories of Tucker humping everyone in sight...).
Someone I work with asked where I was taking my summer vacation, and I told him the Jersey Shore, and he said, "Does that actually count as a vacation?" For me, it's the best kind of vacation: it's cheap, it's close, and because of both of those things, I don't feel obligated to do anything but lie around, reading and eating and doing nothing.
Even though the beach we now visit is not the one I went to growing up -- it's probably 20 minutes from there, and just has a different vibe -- just being at the shore brings back so many happy memories of the family vacations I took as a kid. When the Smelmooo and I went to the boardwalk on Point Pleasant (to see The Nerds -- I'm down to 92.75 in 900-something days!), I remembered my older sister walking five paces ahead of my dad when he wore black socks with sneakers to the boardwalk when we were kids; I remembered going to that boardwalk with a friend in high school and eating ice cream with cookie dough topping, and another visit with another friend where a vendor told me he'd give me a Coed Naked Beach Volleyball shirt for free if I gave him a blowjob. They keep you on your toes in Jersey, really.
I remembered sitting on the beach with my friend Kristin the summer before the Spin Doctors became really popular; she played me Two Princes on her discman as we sat on the beach late at night, bundled up in our matching hooded oversize Gap sweatshirts -- hers purple, mine coral -- Kristin smoking cigarettes and me lying on my back looking up at the stars, listening.
I remembered taking long walks on the beach at night, half-hoping the older kids congregated around bonfires would ask me to join them, half-fearing that they would.
Climbing on lifeguard stands at sunset, meeting up with other kids, feeling rebellious and cool as we climbed and jumped and made fast friendships that ended just as quickly.
Playing touch football with my brother and his college friends, with a yellow-and-brown Nerf football, with a giant black bruise on the yellow side, that we'd gotten at the corner drugstore.
Having awkward conversations with boys who wrote poetry by the lampposts scattered along the beach, trading phone numbers and having nothing to say once we'd left the magic of summer and sand and surf.
Holding my parents' hands in the ocean, judging the height and strength of each approaching wave, never getting tired of screaming "Over!" or "Under!" or "Through!"
Walking to the main drag every night for ice cream, waiting in endless lines and feeling that every minute was worth it, but regretting the last-minute trip to Dairy Queen before the long ride home, which always made me carsick.
Although we played bocce instead of miniature golf, and ate too much ice cream at the Beach Plum instead of at Dairy Queen, and we violated the no-TV rule my parents always instituted, there's something about every trip to the shore that just feels the same, in a good way: the kids at the water's edge with their pails and shovels, covered in sunscreen, hunched over and squealing as they water laps at their ankles; the cute college guys on the bocce court behind us who got police warnings for open container about 5 minutes after they got there; reading the newspaper and playing cards without a care in the world. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing, and I can't wait to do it all again next summer.
Someone I work with asked where I was taking my summer vacation, and I told him the Jersey Shore, and he said, "Does that actually count as a vacation?" For me, it's the best kind of vacation: it's cheap, it's close, and because of both of those things, I don't feel obligated to do anything but lie around, reading and eating and doing nothing.
Even though the beach we now visit is not the one I went to growing up -- it's probably 20 minutes from there, and just has a different vibe -- just being at the shore brings back so many happy memories of the family vacations I took as a kid. When the Smelmooo and I went to the boardwalk on Point Pleasant (to see The Nerds -- I'm down to 92.75 in 900-something days!), I remembered my older sister walking five paces ahead of my dad when he wore black socks with sneakers to the boardwalk when we were kids; I remembered going to that boardwalk with a friend in high school and eating ice cream with cookie dough topping, and another visit with another friend where a vendor told me he'd give me a Coed Naked Beach Volleyball shirt for free if I gave him a blowjob. They keep you on your toes in Jersey, really.
I remembered sitting on the beach with my friend Kristin the summer before the Spin Doctors became really popular; she played me Two Princes on her discman as we sat on the beach late at night, bundled up in our matching hooded oversize Gap sweatshirts -- hers purple, mine coral -- Kristin smoking cigarettes and me lying on my back looking up at the stars, listening.
I remembered taking long walks on the beach at night, half-hoping the older kids congregated around bonfires would ask me to join them, half-fearing that they would.
Climbing on lifeguard stands at sunset, meeting up with other kids, feeling rebellious and cool as we climbed and jumped and made fast friendships that ended just as quickly.
Playing touch football with my brother and his college friends, with a yellow-and-brown Nerf football, with a giant black bruise on the yellow side, that we'd gotten at the corner drugstore.
Having awkward conversations with boys who wrote poetry by the lampposts scattered along the beach, trading phone numbers and having nothing to say once we'd left the magic of summer and sand and surf.
Holding my parents' hands in the ocean, judging the height and strength of each approaching wave, never getting tired of screaming "Over!" or "Under!" or "Through!"
Walking to the main drag every night for ice cream, waiting in endless lines and feeling that every minute was worth it, but regretting the last-minute trip to Dairy Queen before the long ride home, which always made me carsick.
Although we played bocce instead of miniature golf, and ate too much ice cream at the Beach Plum instead of at Dairy Queen, and we violated the no-TV rule my parents always instituted, there's something about every trip to the shore that just feels the same, in a good way: the kids at the water's edge with their pails and shovels, covered in sunscreen, hunched over and squealing as they water laps at their ankles; the cute college guys on the bocce court behind us who got police warnings for open container about 5 minutes after they got there; reading the newspaper and playing cards without a care in the world. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing, and I can't wait to do it all again next summer.
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