I was walking on the beach at Devereux with my friends, the spray of the ocean rushing up to meet us. The carnival games buzzing and whirring in victory. The smells of all different carnival foods flowed into our nostrils: pretzels, hot dogs, fried dough, and the like. Just sitting on that stretch of beach eating the dough seemed to be enough for us. We were simple enough that we could just relax. Or, every now-and-then we would run over to the playground that was eight years too small for us. We didn’t care. We were crazy. We loved doing these ridiculous things that we knew were too small for us. Playing the games that cheated us out of a few bucks. Those carnies are all the same: real creepers.
When we were walking around, smelling the scents and hearing the sounds, I was thrown back about five years to when I was eleven in Salisbury, Massachusetts. There was a semi-large amusement park, right there on the beach. It had rides, attractions, games, and even a little stage in the middle for the occasional small musical performances. At the time, my mom would tell me stories of when she was my age or even younger, and her family did the same thing we did. They traveled through the park, seeing the sights and smelling the smells.
I remember walking on the shores of the ocean with my mom, brother, and aunt. The spray leapt about ten feet and kissed my cheeks. We would walk past the drip castes my cousin and I used to build, me looking back as they got knocked over by the waves. I also noticed, looking behind me, that we were very far from the house, its roof being only a speck on the horizon. I watched it disappear into the night, and the waves erase my footprints from the sand. Both were relics of time that will be lost forever.
Suddenly, thinking of those footprints and that sand and those castles, like the erasure of the prints, I realized the past was but a memory. As I was thrown back to the present, I said my farewells and returned to waiting on line for my friends to get off a ridiculous ride, the Roundup. I hate spinning and doing it at a fifty-degree angle in the air, so I held back.
Later, it started to rain. Some of us were smart and got back home before the big stuff came, but most of us decided twenty-five minutes too late that we could walk, with our bikes, to one of our houses. We awkwardly presented ourselves, sopping wet, at his back door, which he opened with exasperation and frustration, calling us ridiculous and stupid as he went to get us towels. Even if he was mad, and I personally don’t blame him, we still had fun, relaxing and watching old movies that also reminded us of those years gone by.