A pleasant surprise at the beach

The late summer sun, at Smithtown’s Long Beach, made looking at the Western sky difficult. The last blast of the summer heat always leaves me with an ambivalent disposition. My Dog, Truman, was being his usual, impossible to walk, self. The exposure to his favorite boat ramp caused him to pull even harder now, reminding me of how I never properly trained him to walk on a leash In the first place. But, whatever, it is what is, he has one goal in mind and that’s to run to the end of the ramp and leap into the bay.

On this particular walk, however, his concentration is disturbed by the sound of two young kids walking towards the ramp. With the sun full in my face, I could see the two boys both carrying fishing poles and a spackle pail. I can hear them now as they are fully engaged in dialogue. I must confess, their constant, high pitched, bantering was a bit annoying. But at this point, I could discern that they were discussing the best course of action and strategy to yield more fish.

By now, Truman is fully schizophrenic as he had to decide what he wanted more, to say hello to the kids or leap off the nearby boat ramp. The two kids made that decision for him as they approached to say hello. Coming closer, I can see that the two were about 10 or 11 years old and the low setting, late summer sun was casting them in a comical ten foot shadow.  As they further advanced, I could see that they had no shirts on, seemed a little too skinny and far too sunburnt. Their hair appeared matted and pointed, presumably from a mixture of sweat and salt water.  “Going for snappers,” I inquired.

“Yeah, we already have a few,” said the skinnier of the two.  “We know exactly where to get them,” said one of the kids as he was pointing to the back of Stony Brook Harbor.

As this point, Truman has his nose in their spackle pail and one of the kids is warning him not to drink the salt water in the pail. “He won’t drink the water but he seems pretty interested in those snappers,” I replied.

“Oh, ok, here, take a look,” said one of the boys as he pulled a pretty stiff snapper out of the pail and showed it to my dog. Truman gave two sniffs and started pulling me away from the kids and towards the empty ramp. He was obviously satisfied with his inquires.

“Well, good luck guys,” I said.

“Thank you and it was nice meeting you,” said taller kid.

“Nice meeting you….hmmm,” I am thinking to myself. Wow, they were pretty well mannered kids and I marveled at the level of their maturity and focus. Their parents should be proud of them. But in a flash, my neurotic parenting skills became fully engaged.  Where the H-E (double- hockey- sticks) were their parents and why weren’t these kids wearing sun screen?  Where were their cell phones? Does someone know that that they will be just footsteps from a ripping outgoing tide that could easily lift an 80 lb. kid off his feet and deposit him out in Smithtown Bay?

But the fact was, that today, there were no parents with these kids. There was no idling Cadillac Escalade with a hyper vigilant mom, observing and evaluating every move. Not only were no parents around, there were also no coaches, teams, or plastic trophies. There were no play dates, expensive Lacrosse lessons, and there was no X-box, play station, Instagram or Facebook. Today these kids were free of adult supervision with its often accompanying, politically correct, creativity killing environment.  Today, their minds were free to take in the wonders of nature, decide on a goal setting course of action and execute a plan. All of this, occurring, absent the stifling suffocation of helicopter parents.

On this day, on Smithtown’s beautiful Long Beach, during the waning days of summer, were just two slightly skinny, polite kids learning how to negotiate with the world, taking risks, acquiring valuable life lessons and enjoying the wonders and mysteries of God’s playground; those lessons, often overlooked and dismissed, are priceless.