Big Kahunas

Last week, I went to the beach. I love the beach, and I also happen to have a certain fondness for water parks.

Now, some people seem to find this strange. I’ve heard a lot of “you went to a water park without kids?” and “why?” since the end of the trip.

I think the first thing I need to explain is that I will do just about anything for a lazy river. I have looked into joining a gym that will cost me $45/month not because I would ever touch an elliptical or a treadmill, but because the facility houses an indoor lazy river.

Yes, I am considering paying an annual fee of $540 just for the privilege of year-round lazy river access.

When I visited a friend in Indianapolis last summer, I insisted that despite our limited time together, we go to the lazy river at the JCC near her house. I’m sure she mentioned her lazy river in passing having no idea that I would not be able to let it go.

Way too many of our conversations went like this:

My Friend: “Is anyone hungry?”

“Should we go to the museum?”

“Who wants to try [insert the blank]?”

Me: “What about the lazy river you told me about?”

I’m sure it was not at all annoying.

I also happen to love water slides, and after years of water park experience, I have learned one very important lesson: there is no bathing suit that will not lead to some kind of flashing incident at a water park.

There’s something about that rushing water at the end of a slide that seems capable of dislodging the delicate areas of even the most demure one-piece. So, when I visit the water park, I’m also the super cool person with a t-shirt over her swimsuit.

Well, at the water park in Destin, Florida, it seems that the t-shirt is against the rules on certain slides. Why, I don’t know, and I have to imagine that any lifeguards at the end of the ride would prefer to be flashed by co-eds rather than 30-somethings.

When the only lifeguard who wasn’t from the Ukraine told me I’d have to take off my shirt, I wasn’t exactly thrilled. She didn’t blow her whistle, but her “that’s not allowed” was very firm.

(I’d also like to know why most water park employees seem to be from obscure European countries. If you visit Alabama Adventure, every name tag tends to bear some derivation of “Hi, My Name is X. My Hometown is Reykjavik.” Is there some sort of exchange program I don’t know about? Are there a bunch of kids from Bessemer working amusement parks in Iceland? I’ve always wondered.)

After riding the one slide sans t-shirt and receiving a terrible wedgie, I retrieved my shirt and headed for another slide.

As the SO and I were climbing the stairs, I saw yet another sign that read, “No t-shirts allowed.”

I was on the verge of reluctantly removing my boob-protection when a different lifeguard said, “Don’t worry about it.”

That’s when I realized one of the few plus sides to aging – anyone who’s probably going to call you “ma’am” probably isn’t going to make you obey all of the rules (especially in environments where cardboard totem poles tell you how tall you must be to ride).

In a land of skimpy bikinis and tramp stamps*, I was a ma’am, and ma’ams got to keep their t-shirts. (Probably more so for the sake of the lifeguards than myself, but I’m OK with that.)

I’ve never been so happy to be a ma’am in all my life.   

*On a somewhat related note, in all seriousness my sister spotted two guys on the beach, one with “Dude” tattooed on his neck, and the other with “Sweet” tattooed on his. Almost more so than what’s happening in the market, the fact that people permanently ink their bodies with slogans from “Dude, Where’s My Car?” terrifies me about the fate of this nation.

Worst Pet Ever*

There are pets that are good ideas -- dogs, cats, parakeets. (Some people might argue for the ferret, but I'm not one of them.) Then, there are pets that are bad ideas -- rabbits, mice, anything that could become dinner if you live on a farm. (If you would pay someone to remove it from your home, I also contend it does not fall into the "pet" category, so I've never understood the market for mice, rats or snakes frankly.)

Of course, as a child, you have no idea what constitutes a good idea pet or a bad idea pet. And while my mother was in her "we're not getting a dog" phase, I'm pretty sure I begged for every pet under the sun -- chicks, kittens, bunnies and birds included. I started with fish, had a hamster and eventually, around the time I turned 12, graduated to birds. But somewhere in between, I had the worst bad idea pet there is -- the hermit crab.

We all know how it happens. You're down at the beach. You go into some store with a shark's mouth for a door, and within 15 minutes, no souvenir T-shirt, bag of shells or gull  perched on a piece of driftwood will do. What better way to take the beach home with you than in the form of a tiny hermit crab who lives in a portable, plastic case with sand and plastic green grass?

(I should probably also mention that I was the child who tried to catch minnows at the lake so that they could be my pets at home. I prayed that unsuspecting turtles would find their way into my yard, and I was heartbroken on the day that some other super lucky kid took the class chick home after we had all carefully incubated him/her from egg to hatchling.) 

"Please, please, please," were very common pleas the moment I came within the vicinity of anything that could warrant a name, habitat and feeding schedule. I was an animal lover from the get-go.

But, I digress. My primary point remains that there is no worse pet than the hermit crab.

My sisters and I were always allowed to purchase three of the creatures and take them with us after a trip to the beach. After all, they were cheap and didn't require too much in the way of care and feeding. Plus, it's not easy to take a five-hour drive home with three whining and disappointed girls in the back.

And every year, despite my high hopes for the hermit crab, nothing ever quite worked out the way I planned. I often wanted to "race" them, but considering their speed (and that half the time they hadn't left their shells when I called "go"), I usually forgot about the competition, wandered off to do something else and when I remembered my "pets" three hours later, it was a desperate search to find them in the house before my mom got home and wondered when I'd gotten the permission for free-range crabs.

The other joy I found in having hermit crabs was waiting for them to molt.

"You'll have to keep plenty of shells around," the teen at the shark's mouth star would always explain. "As they grow, they have to leave their smaller shells and move to bigger ones."

This promised transformation fascinated me, and I made sure plenty of shells were on hand, at all times, just in case. I even hand-picked the shells hoping my hermit crab would find an even prettier home than the one it had before.

On the one occasion my hermit crab did decide to move out of its shell, it walked around naked for a few hours before settling right back into its old shell. Then, it stayed curled up in there for the next month, or however long it took for my mother and I to decide that the hermit crabs were probably dead and throw them out. 

Years later, someone told me that hermit crabs actually hibernate, so I probably threw away live crabs every year, but I'm not sure my hermits and I would have had much of a future together anyway. There's only so much entertainment a crustacean and plastic grass can provide, and hence, why I stand behind the hermit crab as the worst pet ever.

I do sometimes wonder if landfills are full of hundreds of recently-awoken hermit crabs along the lines of the alligator/sewer urban legend, but despite my desire for infamy, I'm pretty sure the hermit crab/landfill legend isn't the legacy I'm looking for.

* Yes, I'm in to the absolutes lately.