Don’t stare…

06Oct07

On Singing Beach today, apparently there was an eight-year-old boy running around who was … under-clothed.  Grossly under-clothed.  As in, wearing his birthday suit.  The Lovely K, who tonight reported this at dinner, said she saw the father and that he didn’t seem to care.  She said he looked … European.

I declared that any kid over two, or at least three, should wear a bathing suit on the beach.  This was my Puritan Mean Streak coming out and, dadgum it all, I want the beach to be free of all naked third graders.

My brother Jim and I happened upon a beach in Nice in 1985 where we were staying with a family whose matron was in my college speech class and whose husband had been reassigned to IBM’s Raleigh, North Carolina office for four years.  At the end of the course, the woman invited any and all comers to join her if any of us found ourselves on the Riviera.  One year later, I had graduated, and the gift from my parents for successfully applying their tuition funds against documentable coursework was a trip to Europe for six weeks, where I would join Jim in Rome, where he was for a semester, and we’d take the “Grand Tour” (as WASPs call it) up through Europe, terminating in London.

The beach in Nice was basically every American young man’s dream, with all females over a certain age grossly under-clothed, even partaking in windsurfing while grossly under-clothed.  It was enough to make any Puritan become a French existentialist.  It was at these times when I guess it was okay for Europeans to be Europeans.

There was also the time in 1990 when I was on the Costa del Sol near Fuengirola, Spain, and there was rare surf.  I, anticipating my time with the Europeans would call for a change in beach couture, had packed only a speedo, thinking this was de rigueur.  Wearing this, I got the courage to ask a local surfer – who, with his friends, were all wearing classic, baggy, Californian-style surf trunks – whether I could rent his board for an hour for a few pesetas (this is pre-euro).

I thought I had learned my lesson and from then on wore my speedo only when I swam laps.  Then, two summers ago, I was at the local pool in Texas near my in-laws’ house, and my father-in-law had invited me to go work out with the after-school team.  I was, of course, wearing the speedo.  All the young boys were wearing the knee-length suits, a la Michael Phelps.  They were gathering in small groups, staring at me, and snickering.

Whether it’s Manchester-by-the-Sea, Nice, Fuengirola or Kerrville, I seem to be out of rhythm with beachwear.  I think I will stick to indoor activities when in doubt.

photo:  rebeka303

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