The umbrella provided by the house is a suitably strong replacement
for our piece of crap, so we are quite pleased to have found it and Bill even
thinks he’d get a replacement just like it.
But it’s a Tommy Bahama-branded umbrella, as are the beach chairs that
come with the house and this gives us pause.
All these items are emblazoned with TOMMY BAHAMA and the back-packable chairs,
which include an insulated pouch, claim to offer “The Coolest Spot in
Paradise.” Who was this Tommy Bahama, we wonder, and how can it be that EVERY
chair on the beach – because there are an awful lot of them – can be the
Coolest Spot in Paradise? Doesn’t that
reduce the intrinsic value of cool? I thinkTommy
Bahama is an older brand that pre-dates cynical corporate creation – you know,
a bunch of suits sitting around a conference table and coming up with some name
that works in all kinds of market metrics – but I am immediately taken to task
for this naïveté by Bill and Peter. “So
you think when the Pilgrims landed, there was Tommy Bahama standing there with
a chair in one hand and an umbrella in the other, welcoming them to the coolest
spot in paradise?” And they’re off. Swear to god, I get no respect.
Wavy Beach today. Waves but no Tide
Ride, much to the dismay of those who ride the tide but to my secret relief as
I worry.[1] There is lots of reading and snoozing after
some good sessions of regular wave diving and jumping. I ask Peter if he is also bored on this
vacation and he says yes but that is how I like it. All summer long, he notes, when he was
surrounded by “screaming children” at camp, he’d think about how he would get
to just lie on the beach and read his book in peace. My how you’ve grown.
You know, says Peter, sometimes when I’m lying on the beach I think
that the sun is 93 million miles away but there is nothing between it and
me.
(Then there’s that.)
For the first time in several years, we find ourselves waiting in a
line for Grace Church Lobster Rolls tonight.
Peter entertains us with a description of the Greenland shark (his
favorite, because doesn’t everyone have a favorite shark?), which lives, not
surprisingly off the coast of Greenland.
It can grow up to 21 feet long, and has a mutualistic relationship with
some bioluminescent copepods that eat its corneas so it is blind, but then has
these glowing eyeballs which attract prey right up to the shark’s snout. Which it then eats because it moves so very
slowly, only about 2 miles/hour.
Apparently they’ve been found with entire deer carcasses in their
bellies, along with some bear and moose.
Needless to say, this also entertained, or perhaps terrified, the lady
behind us in line. So she started to
tell us about some Orca whales that have TEETH and hunt in packs – “oh but
they’re whales, not sharks, I was at a whaling museum, never mind.” Who doesn’t know that orcas have teeth, Bill
mutters later.
I cannot get the image of the slow-moving shark with the glowing
eyeballs and a belly full of deer antlers out of my head. Now it’s in yours, too.
While there may be parents who would work hard to keep this last
family summer vacation a college-discussion-free zone, I am not one of
them. Hence there is some discussion of
the state of Peter’s college applications.
He says all he has to do is finish his essay. What about the supplemental questions, I
ask? They’re like 200 words, he says,
it’ll take me 20 minutes. My eyes roll
back in my head as the roaring grows louder in my ears and I open my mouth to
scream as he smiles because this is all designed to tweak me. See no respect,
above.
But our lobster rolls – or just the lobster salad because at Grace
Church they’ve figured out that if you want them to go, the roll will just turn
into a soggy mess so they pack salad and roll separately if you ask – smooth
over the tension of this conversation.
Also, we eat them at dusk on Lambert’s Cove beach where it is too cloudy
for a sunset but otherwise fly-free.
[1] This is an example of the apparently repetitive nature of our
vacations. As they head off in search of
the tide ride – a fast-moving stream through a man-made cut between the ocean
and Tisbury Great Pond – I always say be careful, I worry about you being swept
out to sea. And they always roll their
eyes and groan and say we’ll be FINE.
I’d just like to note that they could vary their response (because I’m
not going to stop worrying) and that would introduce some variety. In other words, it is NOT ALL ON ME TO KEEP
IT INTERESTING, FOLKS.
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