What is it about a beach vacation that causes your brains to leak out of your skull? As soon as I arrive at a destination that involves sun, sand, and palm trees, it seems impossible to have deep thoughts. As a result, while I was away, I made my family write this post for me. I asked each of them to tell me their "rules" for a successful family beach vacation. I don’t pretend to know the origins of some of these, and some of them sound suspiciously like aphorisms that might have come from Ben Franklin when he was 12. I won’t tell who came up with which ones—I will only say that for the most part you would not be able to guess.
12 Guidelines for a Successful Family Beach Vacation
Imperatives:
1. Naps.
2. Cocoa Puffs.
3. Adult Swim on cable.
4. Burying the little brother in the sand.
Cautions:
5. Don’t bring your down parka to Hawaii or your snorkel to Antarctica.
6. Don’t worry about checking for bed bugs; they only live every place on earth.
7. Don’t take a bath in castor oil or use Champagne as shampoo. (I just record them; I don’t pretend to understand them.)
8. Don’t worry about sharks when you can worry about jet skis.
Eternal Truths:
9. If you leave the dirty pot in the sink and pretend it’s not there, someone else will eventually wash it.
10. It will take 25 minutes to inflate the giant inner tube, and 2 minutes for it to develop a leak.
11. Someone will lose one shoe in the surf.
And, finally…
12. Beauty is in the eye of the beer-holder.
For more from Paula Whyman, see www.paulawhyman.com and her online parody newspaper www.bethesdaworldnews.com.