Since it's the end of September, and Warwick City Beach is not one of the south county beaches, it was nearly deserted. It was hot, sunny, quiet, and perfect...
Once we landed, Bubba announced that she needed to go to the bathroom. I told her there was a porta potty open for her convenience. She then insisted that she planned to pee in the ocean. I then informed her that there was no reason for her to foul the ocean when a perfectly good porta potty was available. I tried to tell Bub that although I find pool peeing and pooping in any body of water a crime punishable by death, ocean and lake pissing is more negotiable depending upon the availability of adequate toilet facilities. As there was a perfectly good porta potty, I insisted again that Bub use it. After five exchanges with me demanding use of an actual toilet, and Bub demanding the use of the ocean as her toilet, I finally gave up arguing since I wasn't totally sure she needed to go anyway. Unfortunately, Bubba really did need to go to the bathroom and took my pause of silence as a stamp of approval. No sooner was she up to her calves in the water, then she began to let loose with a stream of urine a horse would envy. Wouldn't you know it, she also started pissing right in front of the only other family on the beach. Yep. Classy. I tapped her on the head and stuck my face close to hers to give the family sitting behind us the illusion that I was scolding Bubba. In reality, I was telling her that next time if she was going to pee in the ocean, she should at least submerge her butt in the water so no one would know how trashy she and her mother really are.
After the pee debacle, I sat on a bench and watched my babies try to catch bait fish and molest little hermit crabs. I also spent a fair amount of time giggling as Bub ran away from imaginary crabs in the water that she was sure were going to pinch her. I probably spent an equal amount of time telling Bubba to stop throwing sand... Add in the cold Diet Dr. Pepper I brought along for the ride and I was in pure heaven people. After about 20 minutes, I noticed this lady sitting on a inflatable raft, hanging over the edge and dangling her arms in the water. Sometimes she would lay back on the raft and dig around with her toes. She wasn't very far out so I wondered if she was digging clams. However, she didn't have anything to put the clams in on her raft, so after about 20 more minutes spent watching her, I decided she was probably just a weird loon doing some sort of strange exercise on her raft. Turns out my original suspicion was correct, because she finally dragged her raft in from the water with one hand, and started yelling at the father of the family who got to see Bubba empty her bladder. "Quahogs!" She yelled at this complete stranger. "Come see the clams I just dug!"
One of the things I love about Rhode Island is how often complete strangers yell at other complete strangers so that they can have a conversation with them. Sometimes they both yell at each other from the original distance, and sometimes, they gravitate together and visit face to face in a more respectable, if somewhat loud manner. The father walked over to her and I could see they were discussing the quahogs and decided I was NOT going to be left out of this conversation. I wandered down to the beach and the lady immediately started yelling at me about the quahogs. Turns out she not only had four clams in her hands, but had been stashing the others in her bathing suit top:
It was then I noticed that besides her toes, she had been using a car ice scraper to dig them with! Here's her haul when she had emptied out her bra...
This is my favorite blog post yet. I love the description of the way Rhode Islanders talk, it was on point. Made me think I was home for just a minuet.
ReplyDelete