Ocean Shores

When Lia and I were in high school we attended different schools. Her dad had a job teaching up north, so she went there. So seeing her was always a treat, usually reserved for the weekends, but we spent one glorious week together at Ocean Shores. I can't remember who owned the house we stayed at. I learned years later that Lia's mom had been worried what my mom would think of Lia's dad coming along. She pestered Lia to assure my mom that her dad wasn't a pedophile. Appalled, Lia refused. Her mom continued, "Her mom might be worried, but tell her he's a teacher, he had to pass tests to prove he's not a pedophile." Lia never brought the subject up to my mother, which I feel is for the best but I do wonder what those tests entailed. Whether they threw him in a room with a kid and monitored blood flow to his penis or asked a rapid series of questions trying to trick him into admitting it.

 When we went Lia admitted to me she was trying to break the habit of cracking her knuckles. She said she wasn't having much luck, and I offered my services. Every time I caught her, I'd smack her wrist. If she was wearing a hair band on her arm I'd use that, otherwise I'd just whack her with two fingers. Over the trip she started to learn. On our way home, she looked over to see that I was sleeping, snuggled up against the window, facing her with my eyes closed. Sneakily, she cracked her knuckles only to look over at me and see me glaring at her with one eye open. In the face of my disapproval she extended her wrist and I smacked her smugly.

That was also the trip we went to see Snakes on a Plane. Overall there hadn't been much to do, the beaches, sky and sand were all uniformly grey, and her parents were fairly staid in their activities. We jumped at the chance to see an R rated movie at a tiny one room theater in town. We brought popped bags of popcorn and stuffed them into our sweatshirts, pretending to be pregnant. A blind gorilla wouldn't have been fooled, but they let us bring them in. Throughout the movie, both being animal buffs, Lia and I kept laughing that the only real snakes were nonvenomous. The man in front of us told us, "Shut up, you're ruining this for me!" We sniggered to ourselves, and laughed loudly at the cg ripple when the snake launched itself at the woman's breast.

It was a good trip, until her dog ate my toothbrush.