Please Explain #10

Q: Sheila, you are woman who is so proud of her New Jersey roots you have been known to shout out at both appropriate and inappropriate times phrases like, "Jersey Pride!" to anyone who will listen. Here at Dup's Blog, one of our fondest memories of growing up in South Jersey was the summer weeks spent at "The Shore" which is different that the South or West Coast's "beaches." Can you please explain your own experiences at "The Shore" and maybe tell us one of your favorite stories from this seminal New Jersey experience.

Hurray! I've been waitin' for this... Each day I wake up and clasp my little hands together and pray to the heavens, "When will he ask ME, Lord?" And now my day has COME!

Only to have the question be about New Fucking Jersey. Which I have been trying to eject from my molecules since the day I bolted from that overgrown sewer of a state.

HA! Just kiddin'. JERSEY FUCKIN' ROCKS! BON JOVI! BRUCE SPRINGFIELD! And etc.

While in residence within the Garden State, I was at my ugliest and most maligned. So all my memories from there are tinged with sort of an aggressive humiliation, the kind that makes me unwittingly mumble "asshole, asshole," while whacking my head with a NJ Devils coffee mug.

BUT. I do have two memories of "The Shore," as you call it.

We spent summers at the beach as children. My parents and their best friends would rent a little house by the water for two weeks. They would toss all the kids into the ocean and let them paddle around a bit while they went indoors to have sex. When they were done they'd come out and buy us all ice-cream to congratulate us for not drowning.

One time I was bored with my ice-cream and decided to conduct an experiment. I dipped my cone into the sand and ate the sand off it like sprinkles. It was crunchy, a delightful contrast to the silkiness of the soft-serve. I convinced my little brother to do the same. And my sister. And the other kids in our clan. Soon, we were all eating sand-dipped ice-cream cones.

We of course ran out of ice-cream shortly thereafter. So, ever resourceful, we filled the remainder of the cones with sand and ate it straight.

Now at this point I think we all had that vague sensation of "good-idea-gone-awry," but none of us had the gumption to admit it to the others... and there was also a sort of giddiness that came with just the idea of eating sand, like "all this time we were PLAYING in this when we could have been PUTTING IT IN OUR MOUTHS!!"

Around lunch time things started to turn a little ominous. We were all seated around the picnic table, our franks and burgers untouched, our faces slightly green. "Too much sun?" my mother surmised.

"Too much sand," my sister moaned, and then proceeded to yark all over the table.

The other children all yarked in quick succession, after which we were forced by the parentals to confess our deed. We all got spanked and sent indoors to deal with our hang-overs in the damp darkness of our moldy beach rental.

My other "Shore" memory involves prom night, a rank motel room at Point Pleasant, and buckets of vomit (a theme?). But that's for another time...

Sheila