The Beach - A Son's Perspective

Thick Layers of Blood Sucking Insects

May, 2004 Written by L at Age 12

Every year since I was just a little boy, my father told me that we would go camping in the summer, and every year since I was just a little boy, we have stayed home during the summer. In the summer after my sixth grade year at Brookside Elementary, my dad told me that we were going to go to the Outer Banks of North Carolina for a camping trip.

Now for those of you who are not familiar with the Outer Banks, you must know that it is a beautiful place to look at from a distance. Let me attempt to describe it to you. Try to imagine living in a gigantic oven right next to the largest pool of water on the planet. You’re extremely thirsty and all you want to do is drink some of that water; but, you can’t because if you do, you’ll end up getting a large mouthful of salt. Now think about going inside your small tent (which is even hotter than outside) and being attacked by thousands of mosquitoes because one of the camp members never closed the tent flap.

Of course, when my dad told me we were going to the Outer Banks, I just kinda shrugged it off. Why would this year be any different than last year? I asked myself. After a while though, my mom started to get excited about going. “Oh, you’ll love it,” she told me. “Me and your dad used to go there all the time before you were born.”

Now I was starting to get excited. (I was told that it was a wonderful place to camp, I was not warned like you have been). So once everybody was packed and ready to go, we left home and headed out to North Carolina.

Part of camping is the trip to the campground, and lord forbid you fly to your destination! Oh, no my friends, you have to drive there. So now we have a 12 year old who’s just starting to rebel against his parents stuffed in the back seat of a Toyota Rav 4 being forced to listen to an Avril Lavigne CD over and over again. (I now have the ability to sing along with every song on her CD Let Go). As you can imagine this was not fun especially for ten straight hours.

Once we got there, it was pretty fun. The first thing we did was hit the beach. We had brought along a couple boogie boards so it was pretty hard not to have fun. So far we were having a great time until night came. I had heard stories of thick swarms of ravaging mosquitoes on the beach; but I had disregarded them. When we got back to our tent, we found that we had forgotten to close the flap. What we found inside was absolutely horrendous. The ceiling of the tent was lined with a thick layer of bloodsucking insects. It took us over an hour to completely rid the tent of the little beasts.

The next morning I decided I was going to go for an early stroll across the beach. I had no problem getting there because the beach was right behind the campsite. It was getting back that I had some problems with. There is a rule that you should follow when going to the beach. Always pick out a landmark to help you find your way back home. I did this. For my landmark I picked a sign that read

No Trucks On

Beach

Under Penalty of Law

It wasn’t until I had walked for about twenty minutes that I realized there was a sign that read

No Trucks On

Beach

Under Penalty of Law

about every twenty feet or so. So I ran back down the beach until I came to a place that looked like where I had come from. I walked over the hills that I was sure would lead me to my campsite. Well, instead of a campsite, I found myself in a field of odd looking flowers. I started to cross the field hoping it would lead me to some place of familiarity. Once I was half through, the field of flowers had grown so thick that I could not avoid stepping on them. After stepping on them, I really wished I hadn’t. They turned out to be small cacti.

So I pushed on down the field of cacti until I came to an outhouse. Not any outhouse; my camp’s outhouse. I started to leap for joy until I landed on another cactus, which pretty much just ruined the moment. I had finally made it back to the camp for another long night of mosquito killing.

The next day we went home. My parents were sad to leave but I was leaping (carefully) for joy.

To this day I refuse to do anything with my parents.