Thank Goodness for Sunblock

I always thought this whole blog thing was just a waste of time, or for people who had time to waste. Personally, I have no time to waste. I have a very strict schedule to follow that includes sleeping and television and my good friends Ben & Jerry. Up until today I was going to be forced to create a blog against my will by my good friend Mike De Soto. Lucky for me, today something happened that I feel is “blogworthy”.

In order for me to tell the story, I’ll have to give you some background information. My mother is extremely overprotective. Don’t get me wrong, I love her, she’s my mom, but she’s always been a little apprehensive when it comes to any of her kids doing things by themselves. For instance, she calls me everyday while I’m at JMU, just to check in. Anytime I go anywhere, I have to call her once I get wherever I was going. Otherwise she’ll hunt me down somehow.

When I was fifteen I was going to baby-sit for some family friends who lived about thirty minutes away, so they had to come pick me up. My family was at Home Depot or something like that and I was hanging out by myself waiting to be picked up. I made some microwave macaroni and cheese for lunch, but to my disappointment, my clients knocked on the door earlier than expected and I had to leave my hot macaroni and cheese on the kitchen counter. No biggie, I would probably just be raiding their fridge later anyway. I guess my parents came home within the hour, because about two hours later, while I was babysitting, I received a call from my house.

“Hello?”
“Kerry?? Oh my God!!!” and my mother started bawling at the other end of the phone. “I thought we lost you!!! Oh God!!!”

In her hysterics, she passed the phone to my cool and collected father.

“Where have you been? We called the police.”

“What?? I’m babysitting, you knew that.”

“Yeah, Mom got upset when we came home and your hot macaroni was on the counter, we called everyone you know, we didn’t know where you were. We were just calling to tell the Sproats that you couldn’t baby-sit because you’d gone missing.”

“Um… well I’m here…”

“All right, I guess we should call the cops then and tell them to call off the search. See you later tonight.”

Click. This is why cell phones were invented.


***
I have the good fortune of being a child of two people who just recently purchased a beach house on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, meaning that I get to stay at the beach for free. As it is Memorial Day weekend, most people go to the beach some way or another. So we’re here, at the beach. Woke up this morning, had a bagel, jumped in the pool, then decided I was going for a walk on the beach for a little while before lunch. It’s my favorite thing in the entire world, walking on the beach, getting my feet wet. I don’t know what it is, but it makes me feel great. Around noon, I head out.

I’m walking on the sand, and anyone who has ever been to the Outer Banks knows that you have to keep track of the walkways to the beach. If you walk back to the wrong one, you get lost in the maze of houses out here. You may have to see it to believe it. In anycase, that's what I did today; got lost. See, you have to look for landmarks. Things sticking out of the sand, a certain beach umbrella, something. I decided I was going to count the lifeguard chairs. Little did I know that the lifeguard chairs were just put out today, and the lifeguards were still moving them around and putting more out.

I walk about a mile from my starting point I’m guessing, who knows, it was pretty far, and decide to head back. Meanwhile I have no concept of the time. I see some lifeguard looking guys on some of those four wheeled ATV things. I don’t think anything of it. They’re probably just patrolling the beach, looking for drowning people. But ah, they were looking for ME. (Obviously the Corolla Beach Patrol is not very efficient.)

***
My dad and little bro Timmy had gone down to the beach around 2:15 to go look for me. They couldn’t find me and much to my overprotective mother’s influence, called the beach patrol. I mean, you’re kid goes missing, you call the police, right? The lifeguards drive all the way up and down the beach for twenty minutes. My dad, on the beach at the home base type thing they had made, hears on the walkie talkie of the lifeguard who is waiting there with them, “I think it’s time to call the sheriff.” Suddenly, I turn into a missing person. I’m a face on a milk carton.

***
Anyway, I don’t know if I miscounted or if they moved the lifeguard chairs around or what, but I walk back up the wrong walkway and end up in a neighborhood that I don’t recognize. Shit. I walk back to the beach and retrace my steps a little bit and walk up another walkway. Still shit. I figure I can’t be that far off from my parents’ house and that all the neighborhoods must connect somehow, and start walking in the direction I think the house is in. Dead ends, no house. I walk in the opposite direction. Nothing. I move to the next block up, closer to the main road. Walk past a kid playing basketball (why I didn’t ask to use his phone, I HAVE NO IDEA), walk past some construction workers and get whistled at. Walk to the end of another street. Fuck. Finally, I decide to walk to the main road. I walk down the side of the main road, hoping that by this point someone is driving around looking for me because it’s been about three hours since I left. Or it feels like three hours. I walk some more, past this realty company with about fifteen redneck looking men hanging outside of it. I would have asked to use the phone, but I’m a girl, I’m lost and kind of starting to get scared at this point, and didn’t feel comfortable asking these strange men if I could use the phone inside the building they were sitting in front of. I press on.

After a while, I figure I must’ve gone too far. I turn around, trip over a rock or ditch or something and my flip flop breaks. Great. Just what I need, to be walking along this main road with one shoe. I walk past the realty company again, limping on the painfully hot asphalt, figuring that at this point I should just suck it up and ask the strange men if I can use their phone, but they’re not there anymore. Shit. But it’s not too long before I see a silver SUV coming towards me, honking. My parents don’t have a silver SUV…

***
Meanwhile my mom is driving around in hysterics while I’m limping all over Corolla and my Uncle Chris is on one of the decks of our house, holding down the fort and looking into cars as they drive by, making sure I’m not tied up and gagged in the back of one.

***
“Are you okay? We saw you limping, do you need a ride??”

“Umm… I’m kind of lost and my flip flop broke!!!”

The people in the SUV pull over and offer me a spot in their air conditioned sanctuary. I’d been walking around in the sun for about four hours without stopping.

“Where are you going?”

“Myrtle Court, I have no idea where it is.” I tell them my story and they tell me about the lifeguard chair situation. It obviously wasn’t the best day to use them as landmarks.

“Okay, do you mind if we go back to our house to get a map?”

“That’s a-okay with me.”

The neighborly people who picked me up are Jack and his wife Bucky. Yes, Bucky. Maybe she spells it Buckie, I don’t know, but I am 110% sure that I heard Bucky. They’re from Pennsylvania right outside of Philly, and have had a house here in Corolla for about sixteen years. Nice folks. They find Myrtle Court on their Outer Banks map and finally, I’m resting my fate in the hands of Jack and Bucky, heading back to the elusive beach house.

I run into the house screaming “I’m here! I’m here!” and run to the phone because I know for a fact that my mother is out there somewhere searching for me. Call my mom. “Mom, I’m okay, I’m at the house!”
“Oh God Kerry! Oh God!!” like I expected, the bawling starts and our connection is lost.

My Uncle Chris walks up the stairs, “Where the hell have you been?”

My mom comes home, tears and everything. “Thank God, thank God, thank God.” I definitely made her age about fifty years today. The tears subside and she starts talking about the beach patrol.

“You missed out, there were some hot guys out there looking for you.” I love my mom.

Damn it. I could’ve had a date tonight.

I tell them the story, Uncle Chris calls Dad, the search is called off. Dad and Timmy trek home from the beach. They are able to make it back without a problem.

***
With my aforementioned anecdote, the entire Corolla Beach Patrol and Sheriff’s office looking for me is not surprising. This is not the first time I’ve spurred a search party. And after four hours of walking around aimlessly, I’m back. Back from my quick, lazy stroll on the beach just before lunch, now with the desire to bake five million cookies for all the hot lifeguards tomorrow to thank them for looking for me for an hour (even though they were unsuccessful, a hot lifeguard is a hot lifeguard).

I feel like an idiot. I’m a capable twenty year-old woman. I flew all the way from D.C. to Western Australia by myself without a problem. That’s three flights and a thirty-six hour trip. I can navigate airports I’ve never been in before, I’ve even been known to navigate the Paris metro system without this much of a problem, yet when it comes to a place that I’ve been spending my summers for the past twelve years, I might as well be a blind cat without whiskers or a sense of smell. Sure, airports and the beach are completely different, but what would cause me to have such a lapse in judgment?

The moral of the story: never go anywhere by yourself without your cell phone and don’t be afraid of a kid with a basketball.

***
Endlessly thanking Jack and Bucky, I step out of the SUV. Jack says, “No problem, us Corolla folk have to stick together!”

Thank God for that, Jack. Thank God for that.

***
A little long winded for my first blog, I know. But it’s been a hell of a day.