Going to the beach...don't leave without....

Going to the beach with my family has taught me a few valuable lessons prior to school letting out and summer beginning:

1.  Sand is evil.  It has this power, I call it the crotcrakmiserwear power, the ability to find the one place that would annoy you and working it's way in there.  Here are a few example:
In the hinge of my glasses, so every time I open them it crunches.
In my beverage/food/mouth so I can hear the crunch between my teeth.
Inside my bathing suit just as I go for a long walk and feel every inch of it.
On the lollipop BEFORE the child even gets first lick - I just take lollipops and roll them in the sand then say, "Here honey, let's just get this out of the way."

2.  It is very easy to skip your mortgage when at the beach.
It starts with the trip to the grocery store for every snack food you can imagine without any nutritional value.
You then spend a fortune in the souvenir shop so you don't have to buy them a LIVE hermit crab to bring home.
There's not one, but many trips to the arcade and each involves lots of money, money for THE CLAW, the one game that has taught too many children the agony of defeat.  With THE CLAW is the DRAW, if they hit it big, there's a iPod Touch they could win!  Children will result to digging through the couches to satisfy their claw addiction.

3.  Food at the beach has no calories, especially those that are good for you like - French Fries, Funnel Cake, Ice Cream, Candy, and especially Caramel Popcorn - when followed by a Diet Coke.

4.  Everything will stay perpetually wet at the beach - your bathing suit, your towels, your clothes, toilet paper, coffee filters and especially

5.  There is no way to look sexy running - Bo Derek was a fluke, probably because they filmed her in slow motion so she didn't fall all over the place when her feet hit the sand.  When you do fall in the sand, it's usually with that lollipop in hand.

6.  If you want to feel better about yourself - go to the boardwalk.  Your choice of bathing suit is so much better than 400 lb men in Speedos and women in thongs where their butt cheecks eat up the butt floss.  If they are not walking in bathing suits, they are in too short shorts, too tight T-shirts, and usually holding the extra size bucket of French Fries.  Feel better about your self and go on a diet all at the same time.

7.  Thinking about a tattoo - go to the boardwalk - best deterrent out there.  The 70 year old female in the thong with the tattoo of Free Bird from the 60's that now looks like a Turkey Vulture on crack will make you think twice.

8.  You will look like shit at the beach, beach hair - that fully humidity, kinky, hard water shit you can't get a comb through will be the norm.  Want to feel better, go to the boardwalk and see that everyone else is in the same predicament, some worse than yours.

9.  The pirates had it right - the only way to survive the beach - the sand, the boardwalk, the mini golf, the food is with rum.

What have you learned at the beach/