Vacation Packing List: Sharpies, Pool Noodles, Engineers, Divorce Attorneys, and Corona
When Drew and his (extended) family go to the beach, it's sure to be an interesting time.
By Drew Gallagher
HUMORIST
I recently vacationed in Sandbridge, Virginia, with extended family and friends. We have taken this every-other-year vacation for about 15 years, and five marriages have dissolved during that time. It is one of the reasons we only vacation together every other year, and, I presume, the reason most cited by other family members and friends for not joining us for this week of beachful bliss.
This year there were 23 of us staying in the same beachfront house, but we made certain we never all took the stairs to the beach at the same time because the occupancy limit for the stairs was 4 according to the limit written with a black Sharpie on a misaligned sticker on a random stair post. (This stair limit proved problematic when the sand got really hot and whomever was fifth in the line had to stand in the scorching sand while another house member used the foot shower to remove every last particle of sand even though we had a perfectly good non-owned pool waiting for us steps away.) As a once and future king of insurance claims adjusting, I can assure you that an occupancy limit written in black Sharpie on a white sticky note does not constitute a waiver of negligence on behalf of the homeowner. I am certain my family appreciated my reassurance that if the stairs collapsed beneath our collective weight and we were all crushed to death, the surviving family members would still be able to honor our memories by suing the homeowner as well as the property manager.
The occupancy limit on the pool deck was 20, but fortunately we packed a black Sharpie so we were able to increase the limit to 28 simply by putting a line through the zero. We may not be especially good at marriage as a family, but we always travel with different colored Sharpies as well as a number of engineers who were able to calculate the exact angle needed to effectively turn the “0” into an “8”. This, of course, took them the first five days of vacation to figure out.
The arguments over how best to make the zero into an eight paled in comparison to other debates that engulfed our beach house. I suppose that in a nation divided by the best “JD Vance as Baby” memes it might be inevitable that there are divisions among a group of 23 people. One day, after a brief rain shower, a spectacular rainbow emerged above the Atlantic and dolphins leapt from the waters beneath the rainbow to remind us that nature still has the power to offer optimism in a world that seems to have lost its way. It was a glorious moment and was only spoiled when one of our party could be heard muttering: “How gay is that?”
Being a humorist who has written extensively on gay dolphin sex and threesomes among anti-LBGTQ school board members in Florida, I had to offer up my expertise that while the dolphins frolicking might appear “gay” on the surface, those very same dolphins were probably having same sex relationships under the water which would be even “gayer.” A good time was had by all.
The real debate of the week though did not involve either engineers or gay dolphins. It was whether or not Brandy was truly a “fine girl” and “what a good wife she would be.” Some readers might be inclined to doubt our collective ability to measure a “good wife” or “good husband” after five failed marriages, but readers should never doubt our ability to sit in a beachside pool, sip libations, and engage in Socratic dialogue about the watershed moment when “Brandy (You’re A Fine Girl)” by Looking Glass was unleashed upon an unsuspecting world in 1972.
Most in attendance could agree that Hall and Oates were brilliant and that anytime we heard Michael McDonald in a song (including backing vocals for the Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan—“Peg!”) we were compelled to try to reach the upper ends of his vocal range which caused the youngest among our family to cover their ears and sob uncontrollably and our beachside neighbors to turn up the volume on their ‘80s hair band Spotify play list. (My cousin Anne, who can sing better than any of us, was the only one who had any business even attempting Michael McDonald. Anne was once the lead singer for an Ohio-based band named Last Call. She admitted it was a dumb name because whenever a venue would advertise their appearance it was a bit of a deterrent because the marquee would read: “Last Call, 9 PM,” so only Ohio-based Amish would show up and were apparently not fans of Fleetwood Mac covers.)
Some of us believed that the song “Brandy” was dumber than naming a band “Last Call.” The debate was usually silenced by our friend who has a police-issued firearm which she made abundantly clear that she was not afraid to use if we played “Brandy” one more time. (One of my family members did not believe she was a Spotsylvania County police officer because she had not brought her police car with her or posed for Facebook photos at the beach in front of her police car. She assured my family member that taking County-issued vehicles on personal vacations was not authorized and was not a prudent use of taxpayer money and could be a reason for termination which she hoped voters would remember at the next Sheriff’s election.)
It was not all fun and games at the beach because, as noted previously, we have a few engineers in our midst, and one of them is now the fully fledged inventor of Connect-A-Noodle, “America’s Most Versatile Pool and Home Floating Noodle Sets.” I was quite excited by the prospect of “home floating noodles” because I thought I could incorporate those in my levitating throne when I become Secretary of Levity should Abigail Spanberger win the Virginia gubernatorial election in November. Unfortunately, the noodles do not actually float in air or float on the ocean which became clear when we had our 71-year-old cousin Marianne attempt to ride a noodle raft into the teeth of a northwest Atlantic swell. As we watched dear Marianne get tossed upon the sand clutching remnants of her Connect-A-Noodle raft, those of us who had gathered for this pivotal moment in Noodle history started to softly sing the opening lyrics of the Gordon Lightfoot classic “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” (As a point of clarification: we sang softly for the raft, not Marianne. She was fine after a couple of Jamesons and in no way resembles a 14,000 ton cargo ship that was memorialized in song.)
In fairness to my cousin Chris, the inventor of Connect-A-Noodle, “America’s Most Versatile Pool and Home Floating Noodle Sets,” the maiden sea voyage of connectable noodles was intended to be a mission destined to fail because he knew he needed to tweak some of the raft’s design after conducting that first test flight. He probably should have shared that expectation with Marianne beforehand though. I also promised my cousin Chris that I would include his website in an upcoming column if he would be a dear and grab me a Corona because I did not want to get out of the very comfortable pool waters and walk the short distance to the beer fridge. I am a man of my word:
https://connect-a-noodle.com/
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