My wife and I found White Lotus this week, which is about right for us.
This time we’re only five years behind.
The family scenes make me laugh, not so much her, but one struck me hard:
The kid sleeps on the beach at low tide in the first season.
What was so funny? The tide came in like it did on my beach camp.
Growing up near the ocean, you’d think a person would be sea-worthy to some extent.
And some are.
They can’t get enough of fishing and crabbing and clamming.
I like to hop over low waves, and I’m good at it.
But only ankle high. No shark is coming in to bite my ankle, so I’ve got that going for me.
One of my high school friends and I planned a beach camp. (Hey Mark)
There would have been three of us, but the other one was in the Navy. (Hey Ron)
We were nineteen at the time.
The plan was to take lawn chairs, sleeping bags, a few gunny sacks full of beer and wine, and spend the weekend living off the land like we knew what we were doing.
We brought a pot along to boil whatever we caught for food.
Our fishing line included a baited hook and an old spark plug.
We lasted one night.
Food First
Who am I kidding?
Two nineteen year olds with gunny sacks full of alcohol drank first.
No fish, but we scraped up mussels and boiled them while drinking more.
Maybe we boiled seaweed.
By bedtime we’d eaten enough, drank enough, so we rolled our sleeping bags out on the lawn chairs.
We woke up in the rain and covered up with a big sheet of plastic.
We woke up again to find the plastic had gathered all the rain at the bottom of our sleeping bags.
Camping is making adjustments to the environment.
We woke up again to find all of the driftwood floating around us and small waves coming over the lawn chairs.
Hungover, tired, hungry, and cold, we broke camp and packed everything out.
I dropped a gunnysack in the parking lot that foamed through with beer.
The lesson learned?
Read a tide book.
White Lotus Turned Out Differently
First, they were in Hawaii, not west of Charleston, Oregon..
The kid woke up in the surf, but saw a whale jump.
We saw logs bobbing.
The kid walked back to the resort; we drove home.
It didn’t take White Lotus to make me wonder if we did it right.
I’ve had ideas all my life that seem reasonable, but not so much on a second review.
“Let’s make a bunch of chicken and drive until its gone and turn around?”
No.
“Let’s fill up the tank and drive until it’s empty, then fill it again and drive home.”
No.
I could do these things alone, but I’m more of a buddy plan guy.
Two people waking up in the surf is funny; one guy waking up in the surf? Nutty?
It’s important to share bad decisions.
If you’ve made a bad decision before, how did you make it right?
No one else is listening, just you and I, so let it fly.
About David Gillaspie
