Beach/Pool Etiquette For Summer 2013

We are so close to summer and I think we need to establish some ground rules since we spent all spring getting our pasty bodies fake-baked and back in shape. Some folks think they can frequent a beach and/or community pool without any accountability and that is COMPLETE horseshit. Respect your fellow citizens and follow these rules to ensure Summer 2013 is the best ever.

1. Put your effing cell phones away - you are relaxing in the sun, sand, and water. I don't want to see you sitting in a beach chair texting away to see what Mildred is doing and who she met at the dive bar in Southie last night. Tell her to get a morning-after pill and hang up. She's a slam-pig/slump-buster anyway. You also don't need to check in with work because either you're on vacation or you aren't. Stop acting all important and using work lingo intentionally loud so that it looks like you are intelligent and important. You actually aren't, because you wouldn't be bothered if you actually tried to transition your work properly instead of rushing out of the office Thursday afternoon. Finally, your kid wandered over to our section and started taking my kids' shovels. If you were not texting/playing Candy Crush, then he would have stayed in his section of the beach. Plus I think he shit himself and it's leaking down the back of his leg. You might want to start parenting in the next five seconds before I start giving him pixie sticks and Fun Dip. Oh - almost forgot - your twelve year-old is doing the dead man's float about twenty feet out right now. Something about an undertow. I honestly stopped listening once he started to slur his words and went into full-fledged drowning mode. But at least you now have your plans in place for whatever cougar night club you were going to visit tonight with Donna and Brenda tonight.

2. Attire means everything. Sorry folks - if you went into hibernation from October through April, look like a Human Jar of Mayonnaise, gained 48 lbs eating Chocolate Trilogies and haven't man-scaped since the 2012 London Olympics, you need to cover that shit up.

If you look like WWE superstar Sheamus, put on some bronzer

If you still have a FUPA, don't wear a bikini. Your mons-pubis can remain hidden, we won't complain. If you have six necks and fifteen gut rolls, don't bother taking your shirt off.

On the flip side, if you are stick-thin from the new fad diet that has taken over the country (eating reproductive organs, or just grapefruit, or downing ten diet pills, or whatever the fuck paleo is), and your bikini bottoms are falling down your thighs, then wear a one-piece. Listen, I realize Daisy Dukes/cutoff jean shorts are hot. I get it. But please don't go dressing like Rihanna at the beach. If one of your vagina lips is staring at me and asking me 'if I got any cuhhh-luhhh', then you might be wearing inappropriate clothing. If I get confused and stick a few quarters in your girlfriend's coin-slot, it might be too low-riding in the butt-region. Guys - you aren't off the hook either.

If the netting from your bathing suit has somehow been removed, and I can see the outline of your veiny dick and 'brains' (balls) underneath it with a couple pubes poking out, you might want to go shopping for a new set of trunks. Shake that shit out. If you are in the heavyset club, make sure that when you walk/sweat at the beach, that your inner thighs do not suck in the bathing suit and bunch up at your nutsack. Nobody needs to see your testicle mound. 

3. Don't pee at the beach house/pool bathrooms. They are dirty. They have pubic hair and kid droppings all over the place, plus they are generally wet from whatever water people track in. You also get those slobs who think its ok to have a sweaty dump at a public beach or pool. They just bring their stench with them and YOU are stuck picking up the pieces. So its real simple. Do what you need to do at home. Get to the beach, and if you need to pee, just go in the pool. If Duxbury Beach in Massachusetts has gotten warmer in the last twenty years, its because I dipped my privates in there and pretended I was admiring the horizon. I ain't walking to an outhouse, only to look down the hole and find it covered in bloody tampons with fresh poops sitting on top. I'm gonna splash around, maybe grab a Boogie Board as an alibi and let it fly. My kids do the same shit, except they giggle while they do it - so you know they are grateful for this opportunity. Community pools are excellent to piss in. Family/friends with pools, that's a case by case. I don't pee in those pools, because I want to be invited back. But community pools? Have you seen the sediment on the surface when you see the sun reflecting off of it? Exactly. Your pee ain't gonna spoil the bushel.

4. Pack a robust cooler and make one trip to the snack bar. That way you are stationary so I don't have to watch you come in to my peripheral tilting your head sideways as you eat a cheesesteak, in the process dripping nacho cheese off of your hairy nipples. Or your swine kid snarfing down a Choco Taco in 2.4 seconds and then grabbing his sister's Screwball ice cream and choking on the gobstopperish gumball at the bottom.

Plan ahead and your fellow pool-goer won't need to witness your sloppy eating style. If you are BBQ'ing at the beach, please don't let me catch you eating corn on the cob. This is the real reason God punished Sodom and Gomorrah. It wasn't the lustful behavior - too many of the afluent people were eating corn on the cob likes fucking slobs. The butter dripped down their faces and they spit when they talked - "Ohh vish is really goobm, pass me a nappin." The latest Dead Sea Scrolls found in Jordan outline several earthquakes, lightening strikes, and floods because 'God was sick and tired of people eating like those fucking Samarians' so He took matters into His own hands and removed these scoundrels from Planet Earth. Ok that was a little dramatic, but you get the point - nobody wants to see you eat when you have clothes on, we sure as hell don't want to see you eat when you are husky and half-naked.   

5. Don't crowd my space. I got here nice and early to avoid people like you, and you still seemed to find me. I've already spoken to you about the texting and the ignoring your kid who has come over and stolen my kids' beach toys that I had the foresight to pack. Now you are moving your stuff reeeeeallly close to mine. Ain't nobody got time for that. I don't want to awkwardly say hi to your kid running around in a speedo. I don't want to listen to you and your mother-in-law speak romanian to each other. I don't want to listen to your really loud radio blasting DMB or Jack Johnson. Plus you say 'dude' a little too much, and you sound like a buffoon. Not only are you close by, but your dog just took a smash near my napping child. Soggy tennis balls are not my thing. Leash him and get him out of my sight before I recreate the scene from 'Fear'. Finally, you are so close that I can see what loser beer you're drinking. You don't bring swill to a beach. We're adults, here. I don't want to see Bud Light or High Life, or I'll plant drugs on you and have you reported. If you're gonna crowd my space, at least give me that microbrewed IPA that I've been eyeballing for the last half hour. Thanks.

Honorable Mention - if an endangered species of two inch long bird ('Piping Plovers') are on the beach, don't shut 80% of the fucking beach down. Do a cost/benefit analysis and ask yourself - 'Am I going to lose a lot of money pissing off loyal residents of the beach if we severely restrict access?' If the answer is 'yes', then bulldoze the habitat/cook their dead bodies/give them alka-seltzer/torture them or feed them to the seagulls. This actually happened in my hometown, where these things have more rights than unborn fetuses/illegal Mexicans. 75% of them die before even hatching, and each nest needs about a mile of fencing surrounding it. We should blame our federal dunderheaded government for that, not the local beach preservation society. Feel free to beat up the bird-nerds protecting them, though.

Next post - What the hell is going on in the precious metals market? I think it's symptomatic of a larger problem and the overall health of the US economy. Stay tuned!