Clowns And Harlots -- When Life Is A Beach

(By Christopher Corbett)

Every summer my wife's extended family gathers in a rented beach house on THE OUTER BANKS of North Carolina to celebrate family values, gorge on junk food, pine for days of yore, tell stories, get sunburned, peruse the works of
MARY HIGGINS CLARK and CLIVE CUSSLER, watch the same movies, eat more junk food and tell the same stories again.

After a week, they return home carrying six cubic feet of beach sand.

Since time immemorial (or at least as long as I've been a member of the family, which is starting to feel like the same thing), this annual migration takes place. It's a ritual that combines the best of a medieval pilgrimage with the highlights of the BATAAN DEATH MARCH, a side order of FAMILY FEUD and just a dash of SURVIVOR: BORNEO.

The fun begins with a 339.61-mile drive (I know every mile) that each year somehow takes longer. This little jaunt on the nation's most traffic-choked highways brings together elements of NASCAR with a soupcon of road rage. The holidaymaker arrives feeling as if he's had electroshock therapy.

Because there is no zoning on the Outer Banks (near as I can figure), every possible architectural oddity has been shoehorned onto postage stamp-size lots. Here, an Alpine ski lodge fit for the VON TRAPPS. Next door, a MOORISH temple out of A THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS. Across the street, a MEXICAN hacienda and several things propped up on stilts. And as a reminder of the 1950s, the first beach house -- a grim pillbox that looks like something the WEHRMACHT constructed on the Normandy coast. All of these houses have been rented for a week by other families doing exactly the same thing.

After years of study, I have concluded that the problems of a week at the beach with extended family are, on a small scale, the problems of mankind. It's why the UNITED NATIONS does not work. It's why THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS failed miserably. It's why THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (a fine idea in theory) are largely ineffectual. People are basically unfair and selfish -- and family only more so. They want you to buy the CHEETOS. They want to eat the CHEETOS. That's it in a nutshell.

Put any group of people in a rented beach house for a week -- even nuns, BUDDHIST monks, QUAKERS, vegans -- and you'll have LORD OF THE FLIES within 48 hours. Women do all the work -- except that which can be subcontracted to the weaker males (me). My wife, for instance, washes dishes, does laundry, vacuums, sweeps, cleans, fetches, totes, scrubs and scours from dawn to dusk. She also prevents her nieces and nephews from drowning (she was a lifeguard).

Meanwhile, the male members of the tribe engage in the traditional beach rituals -- trips to the BREW-THRU, injuring themselves with children's toys, napping, playing solitary video games, discussing the musings of RUSH LIMBAUGH or
BILL O'REILLY and making extra trips to the Brew-Thru. These are patterns of behavior that any anthropologist would recognize from the Trobriand Islands to Nantucket.

Each year one family member plays paparazzi cameraman and films the entire proceedings. There are said to be several hundred hours of these videos in a vault somewhere. We may have pioneered reality television. Our week at the beach was ROAD RULES with no rules. THE REAL WORLD, SURVIVOR, and AMERICA'S FUNNIEST HOME VIDEOS. I think CHEVY CHASE made a movie about us. We were THE OSBOURNES (as in the British rocker OZZY and family) before we knew there were Osbournes.

In general, normal life ceases to exist at the beach. The noise level is medically unhealthy -- it's like a sleep deprivation experiment. Some member of the extended clan is always awake until 3 am. And at dawn another member rises to begin making a racket. Toilets are constantly being flushed. All the televisions are going simultaneously. Babies are crying.

To pass the time we play board games. We watch the same movies year after year (JAWS is a favorite). We play cards. The children put on skits. They impersonated me once. It was me all right. I was complaining and wearing a Hawaiian shirt.

The week in the Outer Banks is a special time for my wife's family, reminding them of when they had servants. Alas, now they have only one family retainer -- that would be me. My days at the beach are equally divided between when I haul beach furniture, umbrellas, coolers, visors, FRISBEES, boogie boards and a TOM CLANCY novel weighing as much as a cinderblock, down to the beach -- a distance about the length of four football fields -- and when I haul those items back. I look like JERRY LEWIS in THE BELLBOY. I walk 11 miles on an average day -- and three miles more on days when the temperature climbs into the 90s, requiring additional cold beverages. The hotter it gets, the more stuff they want.

When it rains at the beach, the members of our company either peruse the works of MISS HIGGINS CLARK or
MR. CUSSLER, or drive down to Kitty Hawk, to view the exhibit of aerial photographs -- pre-WEATHER CHANNEL stuff -- called WHEN HURRICANES ATTACK. The photographs document what happens when the wind blows 165 mph and you are stranded on a sand bar. But I find that quite relaxing after a few days of beach bliss.

Tom Blais, thanks for the post.