Some places on the Outer Banks have announced they have reopened for summer tourist season.
I’m not sure I’m ready to go traveling just yet, especially when it comes to staying in hotels and eating in restaurants. It might be a good long while before I am comfortable with the notion — unless I get COVID-19, get sick and recover. Then I figure I can go do what I want, right?
But that’s if I do well and recover fully. So I’m not actively seeking out this virus just so I can hurry up with my vacation plans.
So will I miss summer vacation?
No, not really. I often haven’t been able to take vacation in the summer like some folks because of how work falls. And because of how outrageously expensive hotels are in the summer.
(Hey, OBX, if you really, really want to tempt me, how about dropping the room price to the February level!)
Besides, vacations aren’t always a good idea for me. I have the darnedest luck, and I’m injury-prone. Those two things just don’t mix.
Want to talk luck? Like Gilligan, “Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip.”
• On my honeymoon, my bride and I went to Myrtle Beach on a Friday morning. I felt fine on Friday, but woke up Saturday with a terrible stomach ache that lasted all day.
She wanted to dine at an all-you-can-eat seafood restaurant. I sipped on a soda and helped crack crab legs so that she could eat them. No food for Jeff.
• The next year we were going back to the same place. The day before we left, I was at the doctor’s office about some odd growth behind my right ear.
“Oh, that’s a sebaceous cyst,” he said like it was nothing. He told me to put a warm, damp washcloth on it a few times and see if that helped. He didn’t explain what “help” meant, and I had no experience.
Imagine me driving down the road with my wife asleep in the passenger seat. With my mind on the road, I start scratching at something that itches until suddenly my whole hand is wet, and I’m bleeding down into my shirt collar.
Knowing what would happen with that cyst would have been a great help, Doc. I thought the blood was coming out of my ear and I’d had some kind of brain hemorrhage (okay I was 24).
• Jump ahead a year and a half and we are going to Virginia Beach to see relatives. We’re all excited that Jennifer has found out she’s pregnant.
Jennifer and my cousins are relaxing on the beach while I’m in the ocean with a couple of cousins, one of whom had brought a Boogie Board. I’ve never seen half a surfboard before, but he assures me I can use it to “body surf” on my belly.
I am a little suspect. My cousin was about 10-11 and before we left the house, we were wrestling around a little and I accidentally kneed him in the mouth, so maybe Ryan was looking for payback.
Still, I’m game. Ryan shows me how you use a strap to attach the board to your wrist — so if you fall off the board, you don’t lose it.
I ride, and it turns out to be a lot of fun. Soon Ryan, Larry and I are taking turns and having a blast. I take a ride and wade back out to where they are. I extended the board to Larry for his turn just as a wave sneaked up on us.
I knew the wave was going to rip the board out of my grasp with my arms extended — and with that strap on my wrist I might get hurt. So I did what seemed logical at the time: I tried to jump on the board in the second before the wave hit. Ride it out, it’ll be okay.
But, I got my weight too far forward. At the height of the wave, my board tilted forward and then plunged straight into the sand, plowing my face into the sand as well. At the last second I turned my face slightly to the left, and when my jaw struck bottom, I heard my neck crack like with a chiropractor.
I was sure I was a goner. I was going to have a broken neck, be unable to move and drown in a foot of water 10 feet from shore (yes, I have an active imagination).
I stood up, staggered toward shore and saw a steady stream of bloody flowing out of my mouth. My own teeth had bashed into my lips, cutting the bottom one all the way across and the top one across the right half.
Jennifer saw me coming, jumped up and ran over to the snow cone guy and asked for some ice. I sat there with a flavorless snow cone stuck to my face while others had fun in the ocean.
Then Ryan’s mom said the boys were getting washed too far away. The waves were moving them further and further left. I put on my glasses so I could see better.
I told the worried mom I would go yell at them to move back.
I got to the water’s edge and yelled, but they couldn’t hear me. I tried hand gestures, but they didn’t get it.
So I stepped out into the water a little ways. I was only knee deep when a wave came in and knocked me off my feet.
I got up, but my glasses were gone. I reached down in the water and asked others for help. I had every little kid in the area searching for glasses that had apparently been sucked out to sea.
Then we went to dinner that night at a seafood place. There is a reason for the expression “pouring salt on an open wound.” All that saltwater seafood was like battery acid on my split lips.
And my loving, considerate family spent the whole time laughing and pointing at my swollen face and pained expressions. You could just feel the love.
• A year and a half after this, the young couple and now a 1-year-old baby are at the beach. We jumped in the hotel pool for a swim. Jennifer was holding the baby when Sarah leaned over and licked the side of the pool. Why would she lick the side of the pool? No matter how well you plan as a parent, you just can’t expect something bizarre like pool licking.
We looked at each other and wondered if this would be okay or not.
Or not.
All the way home the little one threw up over and over. We stopped repeatedly to clean her up. The five-hour drive took eight hours with all the stops. And then it was right to Northern Hospital to see if Sarah needed treatment for all the lost fluids.
Then there are all the sunburns, bad attacks by mosquitoes and the time I had a stye swell up on my right eye while trying to tour the USS Wisconsin in Norfolk, Virginia.
You see now? Maybe I should just stay home.
Source: https://www.mtairynews.com
Be First to Comment