Every year I await the day when my favorite season finally arrives. Unfortunately, as a New Englander, I’m only allowed to experience it for three days per year. Every year is a depressing sandwich, with half a loaf of bread on each side and the thinnest layer of pumpkin spice filling imaginable. Autumn is obviously the best season— it has the best weather, best flavors and generally just the best aesthetic out of the four. There is, however, one reason that puts autumn above the rest.
Autumn is the best season because no one asks me to go to the beach.
I end up going to the beach at least twice every summer because I forget how nasty the whole affair is. Some people go to the beach to swim. Some go to sunbathe. I go to the beach to complain as loudly as possible and ruin everyone else’s day.
My first complaint is with the entire sun. All the sun has ever done for me is get in my eyes. As a glasses wearer, I have to pick between being blinded by the sun or blinded by my own malfunctioning corneas, and I choose the latter.
If everyone likes the sun so much, then why is half of every beach trip centered around avoiding it? If a beach trip is about “catching rays,” why bring sunscreen and umbrellas? Either enjoy the sun in full or cower like the vampire that you are.
My second issue with the beach is what most consider the main appeal: the water. If I wanted to get wet, I would do it in the safety and comfort of my own home. There’s a reason we invented the bathtub.
The trouble with the beach is that, as soon as you get wet, you will never be dry again; at least, not until you go home and put on fresh clothing. Something about lake water just exudes permanent dampness, and ocean water is even worse — not only are you concerningly moist, you’re saltier than all the food in the Commons combined. A low bar, but a bar nonetheless.
The third and final quality of the beach is the most displeasing of them all. I can best sum it up by quoting one Anakin Skywalker in the 2002 movie “Star Wars Episode II—Attack of the Clones”: “I don’t like sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating, and it gets everywhere.” Need I say more?
Sand is the worst substance that besmirches our planet. It has a most unbecoming way of working itself into every crevice of your body The feeling of sand between my toes is the equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard—except I am the chalkboard.
I feel the beach would be much more bearable if it became socially acceptable to wear waterproof waders there. Clearly, the only way to avoid becoming wet and sandy is to wear large rubber overalls with feet. The much better alternative is to send all the sand on Earth into space, where it will be swallowed by a black hole. I will be taking no criticism at this time, especially pertaining to the “ecosystem” or any sort of “budget.”
Beach enjoyers: you are destroying my life. Please stop making beaches a standard summer activity so that I don’t have to go anymore. I just can’t condone that kind of behavior.
Do you hate something, but don’t have the time to write a whole article on it? Send it over to me at oarnold@drew.edu, and I’ll absolutely destroy it. Unless your opinion is wrong, in which case you will be mercilessly made fun of in front of my millions of readers.
Featured image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Great story.