My Writer's Cramp Pieces

When the Sun Comes Out

A boy and his brother entertain themselves at a beach house over Memorial Day.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When the Sun Comes Out

         We usually stayed at home for Memorial Day weekend, except this year. Don’t ask me why this year was any different. It just was.

         Mom had rented an old beach house in Santa Cruz, California. On the back side of our wood-paneled shack that the owners called a beach house, the sand held fat women. They stood guard over toddlers building castles of seaweed and forks.

         On the back porch of the shack, there was a cool hole that someone had put their foot through. You could look down and see sand, old bottles, and rubbish if you flopped down on your belly. Steve and I thought there might be treasure down there, but Dad wouldn’t let us go look. He said there could be needles.

         There was a broken down beach chair on the deck. We could plop into that and watch seagulls fighting over the leftovers from picnic lunches. Their squawks sounded like young girls fighting over toys. The birds were dangerous though. When they flew over, they dive-bombed blobs of goop.

         Steve and I liked to listen to the ocean waves roaring. They beat on the sand like Mom’s old pressure cooker. We timed the breakers — it was pretty close to ten seconds each crash.

         The foam of the waves fizzed into bubbles. It spread all over the sand. When you walked out onto it, you could see the bubbles pop, leaving tiny finger holes. Walking on the sand was cool 'cause your feet left giant tracks. My brother and I often walked backwards across the beach so we’d leave mystery trails.

         On the sidewalk in front of the house we could see lots of girls passing with hole-punched noses and eyebrows. Dad says it was ‘cause they’re from the university. He wants me to go there some day, but I’m not sure I want to if you have to get holes punched.

         Most of the girls were wearing rainbow tie-dyes and they were bare foot. Lots of them had purple or green-spotted hair. The girls were pretty cool to watch because their belly buttons showed and so did lots of skin. The only thing is that each time Mom caught us looking at them, she sent us inside for a quick game of Charades.

         The guys who walked by in front of the house weren't as interesting. Some of them had green hair, but they were boring anyway. They all looked the same. But you sure couldn’t ignore them. Each of them had an old radio or boom box perched on his shoulder. The noise was so loud you needed to hold your ears. Yet sometimes we saw the guys talking with friends and all of them would be bouncing heads in the same rhythm.

         Steve and I spent most of our time trying to avoid Mom’s games of Charades. We worked on getting a really bad sunburn so we’d have something to brag about when we went back home. We rode the rides on the Boardwalk: the roller coaster, the Mad Mouse, the bumper cars. We spent big bucks inside the Fun House where the games were, and we ate cotton candy and candied apples until our tongues hurt.

         But then on Sunday, the clouds got all dark, and it started to rain. Dad came back from golfing. We’d hardly seen him all weekend, but with the rain thundering down, I guess he figured it was his chance to have some quality time with us. We started off with Mom burning the popcorn she was making us. Mom always burns the popcorn because she can’t stand to waste those little kernels that fall to the bottom.

         Dad made us eat it anyway ‘cause he didn’t want to hurt Mom’s feelings, and then, like it wasn’t a holiday or something, he made us read to him! Now, if it had been the sports page or maybe a murder trial or a bank robbery or something -- but Dad made us read poetry! There ought to be a law protecting kids from parents and poetry!

         Imagine having the day off and getting’ stuck with Little Orphan Annie. Of course, we had to act it out for Dad. Steve and I both knew the poem pretty well. We’d been undergoing this torture for years! But Dad acted like it was the first time, and he laughed when we got to the part about the black things carting Little Orphan Annie away ‘cause she’d been so bad.

         Then the Scrabble came out. We never got to play interesting games like Monopoly. It was always Scrabble! Mom got out the folding table and set it up, and we sat down, one on each side. The game board faced Dad. I never could figure that out. Seems like it should have faced Mom ‘cause she always preferred to squint rather than wear the glasses she was supposed to wear.

         Dad held onto the Scrabble dictionary. He was the final authority on words. Steve came up with “taco” which was a perfectly good word, but Dad said “no” that foreign words didn’t count. How foreign can tacos be when the school cafeteria has them once a week? But Steve had to turn the word into “cat” which didn’t give him as good a score. I didn't think that was fair because taco would have been on a star, and stars are double points.

         We played Scrabble for two hours. Dad was, of course, winning, and I was second. Mom kept messing up, and Steve – he only seemed to know foreign words. Dad wouldn’t let him use “chili” or “si” or “yo.” It just wasn’t fair!

         Finally about four o’clock, the rain stopped. Dad rushed off with his golf clubs, Mom plopped her glasses back on and continued reading her novel, and Steve and I went outside to see if there were any girls with bare midriffs passing by. A day sure gets better when the sun comes out!

996 words