The Beach isn't All Bad

This is somewhat of a follow up to my last post. I think I may have given the wrong impression. I don’t necessarily dislike the beach, per se. I’m just not a fan of what it represents – for the most part, we less V-shaped torsoed types are quite comfortable under the camouflage of our t-shirts and button-ups, but a trip to the beach is a time when we are unveiled and put on display for the world to see. LB always says no one is paying attention to me and I shouldn’t even think about it. She is right; it is very prideful, arrogant, and conceited for me to think everyone is secretly trying to guess the circumference of my mangut. However, we live in a fallen world and thanks to our first parents’ action in Genesis 3, it’s not getting out of my head anytime soon.

For all you slender types who don’t mind strutting your stuff on the sandy shores, think of it this way. Can you just forget about that huge pimple in the middle of your forehead or giant fever blister in the corner your mouth? Of course not, the more you try to forget it, the bigger your imagination makes it. Same thing applies here, it’s just an enlargement right above the waistline instead of on the brow.

Despite all that being said, I don’t actually hate the beach. I always enjoy my time there, my first beach trip not withstanding. I have had many pleasant beach experiences since that fateful trip some 17 years ago and I couldn’t think of a better place to go on a honeymoon. Well, maybe the College Football Hall of Fame, but LB would not be down with that. There are many welcoming aspects the beach offers that always make you forget about that Portuguese Man o’ War lurking in the ocean depths.

As I mentioned yesterday, I am a big fan of putt-putt at the beach. I’m not much of a golf enthusiast, having only played 18 holes my entire life, but I like to consider myself a Putt-Putt Connoisseur. Their courses are usually a lot more elaborate than the ones around home. It seems the further inland you go, the more dulled down the courses become. You play at the beach and you have obstacles like a flaming Trojan horse, in McDonough, you’re putting around bricks and cinder blocks. And when you are lucky enough to get a round in, go with the black ball, it promotes fear in the hearts of your opponents.

Also as mentioned last time, I think the beach can be a breathtaking testimony of God’s glory. However, unfortunately for me it can also be a testimony of His wrath. I’ve already talked about how aquatic life tends to combine its powers against me as if it were the Planeteers and I was the pollution it intended to take down to zero, but that’s not the only way God reigns down his fury on me. Somewhere between my senior year of high school and senior year of college, the pigments in my skin lost their ability to darken. Now, my skin goes straight from pasty colorlessness to bubbling up into a pink ooze. Wait, this is supposed to be why I like the beach…the beach is pretty.

I’ve gone a little overboard with talking about the food at the beach in the last few posts. I am going to have people who maybe don’t know me or haven’t seen me in while picturing me as Star Jones pre-stomach stapling surgery, only as a male with lighter hair…and Caucasian, so I will dial it down a bit for now. But I can’t talk about good things at the beach and not mention boiling your own fresh from the boat shrimp. That may be my favorite part of the whole beach trip. I love knowing when there is a huge pot already cooked just sitting in the fridge waiting on me. Sure you have to work a little bit to get to the good stuff, but that makes it taste that much better.

Despite what I may have insinuated, I don’t think of the beach as Satan’s lair where he prances around forcing people to melt under the sun and pouring sand down their shorts. I enjoy the occasional beach trip every once and a while. At this point in my life, I am just a little bit more fond of activities that allow me to keep my shirt on in public. But that will change soon enough, when my body transformation plan is complete. Then, I will stroll shirtless down the shoreline carefree and flexing my pecs to all I see.