Outside, Looking In
My friend David had to work today, so I went to the beach by myself. Between being at the pool at camp and being outside doing landscaping, I've been outside in the sun so much this year that I feel like I've had enough for the summer. Adding to it down here is the humidity, with the heat index at 111 degrees today. So when I got to the beach, I didn't feel much like laying out or getting in the water, so I took a short walk and then just sat down and watched people for a while.
My family used to go to Myrtle Beach every year, back to the year that I was born, so I grew up on the beach and in the water. Today, I sat down on the sand and just watched the families and the kids and couldn't help reflecting back to my childhood when that was me on the beach. I've had so many great memories... meeting friends and girls... hanging out with my family... splashing in the water... and making sandcastles, to name a few. Sitting there, I couldn't help but feel like the fabulous Miss Bette Davis as the troubled, once famous child star, Baby Jane Hudson, in the last scene of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, where she was sitting on the beach, not realizing that she's not a little girl eating an ice cream, dancing on the beach in her pretty frock any more. Instead, she's a dried up, has-been old hag that can't accept her fate.
'Youth is wasted on the young' is perhaps the most profound saying ever muttered. If I would have known then what I know now, I would have, at the very least, paid attention to every moment. Thinking that you have plenty of time is obviously a lesson that you wished you had learned earlier than you actually did. I saw myself a half dozen times... I miss being a boy. Is there anyone that wouldn't want to do it all over again if given the chance?
My friend David had to work today, so I went to the beach by myself. Between being at the pool at camp and being outside doing landscaping, I've been outside in the sun so much this year that I feel like I've had enough for the summer. Adding to it down here is the humidity, with the heat index at 111 degrees today. So when I got to the beach, I didn't feel much like laying out or getting in the water, so I took a short walk and then just sat down and watched people for a while.
My family used to go to Myrtle Beach every year, back to the year that I was born, so I grew up on the beach and in the water. Today, I sat down on the sand and just watched the families and the kids and couldn't help reflecting back to my childhood when that was me on the beach. I've had so many great memories... meeting friends and girls... hanging out with my family... splashing in the water... and making sandcastles, to name a few. Sitting there, I couldn't help but feel like the fabulous Miss Bette Davis as the troubled, once famous child star, Baby Jane Hudson, in the last scene of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, where she was sitting on the beach, not realizing that she's not a little girl eating an ice cream, dancing on the beach in her pretty frock any more. Instead, she's a dried up, has-been old hag that can't accept her fate. 
'Youth is wasted on the young' is perhaps the most profound saying ever muttered. If I would have known then what I know now, I would have, at the very least, paid attention to every moment. Thinking that you have plenty of time is obviously a lesson that you wished you had learned earlier than you actually did. I saw myself a half dozen times... I miss being a boy. Is there anyone that wouldn't want to do it all over again if given the chance?
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