Childhood Games at the Beach

I really used to love the beach when I was a kid. I still love it now, of course, but everything about the beach has changed.

When I was young, I used to stand right at the edge of the ocean and stare at it and breathe in that ocean air and feel this thrill in my insides that told me someday I was going to be a pirate, no question about it, the good, Pippi Longstocking kind. That was so exciting! Something about that ocean smell—I knew it. It told me—I was going to be a pirate forever, out on that ocean-y water, where I was convinced that smell would be even better.

I used be sort of in love with this guy named Josh in my grade when I was eight. I used to play this game at the beach where I would chase after the waves as the ocean sucked them away back towards the deep part. The thin film of water dragging over the wet sand revealed gleaming chunks of different-colored quartz and bits of broken mussel shells everywhere, and that would thrill me too.

I would choose a color quartz—cloudy moon whitish, for example—and I would quickly look for the closest one to the dark part of the water that was about to become a wave. I pretended I needed to get that specific chunk of quartz or something very bad would happen to my precious Josh, some vague Disney-movie conflict that wasn’t really as important as me actually getting the quartz.

So I would run forward, reaching out for the quartz, really truly making the attempt to grab it, and the waves would crash at me as expected, and the thrill of the cold and wet and the rules of the game made me get up with a shriek and sprint back up the sand to safety ahead of the foamy water. Then I would turn right around and run back again, chasing the water as it dragged back to the ocean, revealing the cloudy moon whitish quartz again.

It was fabulous exercise.

I’m pretty sure the original goal was just to get one, specific piece of quartz, but it ended up being so much fun that once I got it and put it on the sand with my other shells, I knew I needed to get another one so the game could keep going. I kept seeing more quartz rocks that needed rescuing, and my vague, underdeveloped villain kept laughing in my head, and Josh kept cheering me on in my head, so of course I had to continue. It was a game with no end, and I absolutely loved it.

That may be the best, most thoroughly, honestly Childhood Game I think I’ve ever played. The game was devoid of any goal or purpose, because real kids’ games, the ones that require no technology, the ones they truly get lost in and return to again and again, have no goals at all. They’re entirely about pretending you’re some character, or assigned to some role—you’re a scientist who must bang rocks with a shovel to see what type they are; you’re Cinderella who must carry bucketfuls of water back and forth across the yard; you’re a construction worker who must dig up dirt in this one certain place.

Kids’ games are about pretending that you are some character, and the only point is to thoroughly experience how this character’s days are spent. I think the point of the whole thing is evaluation—kids pretend to be a character so they can evaluate whether they should act like this character more often. For example, I’m pretty sure my childhood role as a rescuer of beach quartz and Josh was rooted in something that worried me throughout childhood and into the teenage years.

I’d always been kind of worried that, because I was more of a writer/artistic person, I wouldn’t be tough or clever enough to complete important physical action sequences like everyone did in Disney movies. Aladdin was always one of my favorite Disney movies, and now when I watch it, I’m always like, “That boy could out-do Cirque de Soleil. Look at that jump! Did you just see that jump?” so maybe it’s understandable that I had such high physical standards for myself when I was young; I thought that all adults had to flip around and sail off on structurally useless carpets, rescuing love interests left and right, no matter the physical improbability of success. I thought that was going to be me, someday. That was terrifying. “If you want to be a proper love interest, you will have to battle Godzilla-caliber cobras and break giant hourglasses three times your height with walls as thick as your waist.” Petrifying. I did so want a love interest.

So that’s what I think that game was really all about—evaluating my performance as a love-interest rescuer. Or maybe it was just a carefree children’s game that had no point and gave me fabulous exercise.

If I was really going to be analytical, I would say that maybe what I really liked about the game was selecting a piece of quartz to chase after next, because maybe it was the beginning of my eye for color as an artist or something like that, but I kind of doubt it. I did love that part a lot, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think it had that much to do with art or skill.

Now when I go to the beach, I find that all I want to do are grownup things, like taking pictures for scrapbooks or reading in the shade or walking along the sand. Not necessarily bad things. In fact, very pleasant things. But it is quite different.

It’s more difficult for us to lose ourselves in games and moments like we could in childhood. Again, not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, I’m secretly glad adults don’t get lost in things as easily, because it means we care more about something else. It just means we’d rather pay attention in case our kids get hurt or someone needs something, or our bosses call. It’s sort of a perfect relationship—kids get lost in what they’re doing because there’s so much for them to see and because they don’t know how to keep track of safety and loved ones like we do. Our role is to stay aware so we can call them back out of their worlds at the right times.

It’s an interesting dilemma. On the one hand, we crave that lost-in-thought, secret-world feeling. On the other, we’re too worried and careful to let ourselves go. At the same time, we worry about our kids—we want them to experience that lost-in-thought, lost-in-fun, lost-in-wonder feeling, too, like we no longer can, but then we get scared when they don’t look up when we call them. We get scared because their ears seem to have shut down and all they want to do is gaze at the ocean when everybody else is already in the car sitting on towels and buckling seat belts. We’re afraid to interrupt whatever beautiful dream they’re having, but we’re also afraid that if we don’t, we’ll lose them forever and whatever loving grip we have on them will cease to matter, all in one moment.

It’s hard to say which is the more valid fear unless you know what the meaning of life is: to get lost in wonder or to have families and friends and take care of them. That’s a tough call to make, and I think it’s been a tougher call ever since this recent century, when T.V. and video games and Internet came out and the wars were over suddenly and family survival was more about finding time to sit in one place all together instead of scraping together enough dinner for everyone.

I, for one, say it must be a mixture of both, if one is to be truly happy. If you really asked me, I would lean a little more towards the caring-for-family-and-friends camp, maybe because I’m just a little more afraid than others of losing myself like I used to. But that’s okay.

And we all know that that answer, the “balance/mixture of both” answer, is the one we always use because we can’t decide, but I still think (hope) it’s correct anyway, because if it’s not then I’m going to have to go find the meaning of life all over again and I simply don’t have time.