Beach Sand And How to Avoid It

In youth I developed a taste for beach soot. My family summered at Seal Beach, where we ate peanut butter, jelly, and gritty sunblock sandwiches (PBJ&GS's). I thought the sand was why we called them sandwiches.

I have since learned that sand is not composed of magic, self-purifying crystals from the mines of Etch A Sketch. The beach is smutty foul. Children may as well play frisbee in a giant ash tray. DRESSED IN THEIR UNDERWEAR!

Compare, gentle reader, the following definitions...

dirt, n. the part of Earth's surface consisting of humus and disintegrated rock

sand, n. loose, gritty grains of disintegrated rock

I myself didn't know that Earth was covered in humus, which may explain the way they push it at my grocer; but the point is that if children are given to eat sandwiches, why not dirtwiches or, worse yet, humus on pita?

At least humans avoid dirt. Sand is mixed up in all sorts of corruption. As a teen, I got so wonky on beer (forced upon me by the Bad Kids) that I used the sand for a restroom, spelling my name beside that of my loved one.

She did not find it romantic. So it goes.

At the beach, then, bathing suits may be less appropriate than, say, HAZMAT chemical splashwear. Here are just a few of the items that I've found lying around on the shore: car parts, cutlery, poopy pants, hypodermic needles, a Tony-Robbins-sized marine carcass, and the face of the Virgin Mary.

Since you're already grossed out, how come we see dogs at the beach but never cats? You'd think it would be Kitty Paradise -- the biggest litter box ever! I would personally feel better if, once in a while, they swapped out the existing sand for extra-strength, allergy-control, maximum-clumping, floral scented litter. Now that's a place where I'll play volleyball.

Every year Zuma Beach sees ten million tourists, half of whom are male and think nothing of spitting in sand, which they believe to contain humus and/or pita. Five million spitters ... at least one urinator ... carry the y ... you do the math.

Yet beach loogies are a trifling concern before the more wicked and unnatural phenomenon that we call seagulls...

When they say "eats like a bird," they must not be talking about seagulls unless they mean "swallows anything up to and including an anvil." Seagulls will take your finger if you don't keep it tucked.

Sometimes seagulls stand around conspiring like Roman Senators...

"They've got the bread, men, but we've got the numbers. We've got the numbers."

It's only a matter of time before the seagull population reaches critical mass and the coast becomes lawless like Manhattan Island in the epic motion picture "Escape From New York" and no one -- neither Kurt Russell nor Al Gore -- can stop them.

Is that what we want? To forfeit the beach to winged rats and compost? Surely there is something we can do.

At this point there are no easy answers. We could order a Purell air strike. Bombing always fixes things. We could build footpaths in the sand and admire the beach from afar as one might a botanical garden...

"And this section smells like blueberry cigar with a kiss of moldy clothing."

Or we could all take a seagull home, maybe work it into our diets. Surely it's no crueler than chicken. And I will have you know that a chicken is not, at this moment, eyeing your three-year-old's PBJ&GS, thinking, "She's got the bread, men, but we've got the numbers. We've got the numbers."

Just watch out for the anvil.