The Beach

Western New York weather is like a firm kick in the balls. Some days you can take it in stride, but other days it takes you down hard and brings you to the cusp of vomiting. 

Usually, the first few warm days after the long winter make people act like it’s July. By “warm,” I mean 45ish. But I swear, it feels so good after so much snow and wind that no Western New Yorker can tell the difference. It’s like a disease. Or a developmental disorder, rather. Climatic retardation. Out come the shorts, away go the jackets, and every typical college skank rejoices in the first opportunity to let the bottom of her ass hang out of a clearly inappropriate skirt. Flip-flops are also a must for this celebration of the end of winter. It doesn’t matter how cold you actually are as long as you look cute, right girls?!

But everyone suffers from climatic retardation here. Not just the skanks.

When my former roommate, Jay, and I moved into our first apartment together, we had access to a small balcony on the front of our house. In the world of balconies, this was a sickly little fellow. If balconies were American Gladiators, ours would have been a cancer patient amongst the muscle-bound. ‘Now let’s meet the gladiators you’ll be facing off against today: Nitro!  Titan! Viper! And Chemo!’ It looked as if it was ready to fall off at any moment. My landlords knew that it was on its last leg – they were sure to instruct us that no more than two people were allowed on it at any one time.

It was late March. 45 degrees. Another former roommate, Keywork, happened to be there that weekend visiting me. The three of us, already moronic and impulsive enough, were struggling through a tough instance of climatic retardation. We were spending a lazy Friday afternoon watching TV and having a few beers.

And that’s when the Corona commercial came on.

You know what I’m talking about. I can wrap up every Corona commercial ever made in a few words. Perfect beach. Palm trees. Lounging. Coronas. I’m not sure who actually uttered the idea first, or how the already incredibly dangerous balcony got involved, but before long we were discussing the logistics of transforming little Chemo into the perfect beach. Simply enough, our climatic retardation led us to believe that we should live like the Corona commercial. After all, the winter was over. Who could blame us?

Jay and Keywork departed to get sand and tropical plants. They paid for one 20 pound bag of sand at the local Home Depot. Poor Home Depot. They have a self-loading policy on larger landscaping items like sand. They stole 49 additional bags. 1,000 pounds seemed like it would be enough. With the addition of a couple of potted tropical plants, some mini lawn chairs, a grill, a case of Corona, and a couple limes, we were in business.

Two bags of sand per trip up the stairs meant 25 trips up the stairs lugging 40 pounds of sand. This beach was hard work. But eventually the work ended, and the beach party began.

Friends arrived. Kathryn. Dan-O. Nicole. Shaylah. Adam. Joe. Sarah. Denny. All great people that wanted to enjoy the beach with us. The Coronas were on ice. Limes sliced. Hot dogs cooking away on the grill. Paradise across the street from a Sonoco. What more could anyone want? Winter was a thing of the past and we had our own personal beach.

I’m not sure about the validity of this statement, but I’m also fairly positive that Keywork talked some girl into having sex with him out there. Nothing screams “I had an awesome time last night” like a little sand in your crevasses.

Let’s take a moment to think about the overall weight of this little project. Our landlord didn’t want more than two people on the balcony at any one time. I weigh 180. Jay comes in at an impressive 160. So let’s round up and assume that a “person” means 200 pounds. We had at least eight people enjoying the beach all simultaneously. And let’s not discount the 1,000 pounds of sand. That’s another five “people.” 13 altogether.

I don’t care if we extended our landlord’s balcony person limit by 11. We were living the dream.

But the thing about climatic retardation is that it’s always premature. The first few warm days in Western New York are always followed by snow. It’s science. A week of enjoying the beach was followed by the harsh realization that 1,000 pounds of sand weighs a lot more when it gets wet. A lot more. And of course, another winter storm arrived to alleviate our climatic retardation and dampen our masterpiece.

Now, standing on the beach was accompanied by the house making noises. Bad noises. Like that creaking noise in movies that you always hear before a roof flies off or someone falls through the floor. Our climatic retardation a thing of the past, we began to think clearly and realize some of the more poorly planned parts of the project. 

The sand was wet. And heavy. And once out of the bags much more difficult to transport. Chemo was screaming in pain. We were legitimately concerned that our actions were going to lead to the entire front of the house being ripped off when the old girl finally couldn’t take it anymore and collapsed.

Apparently our landlord felt the same way. One late night at the library, I got an angry voicemail from him. Simply enough, it said, “Hey this is Mark. Either the sand is gone by tomorrow or you are. And you’d better not just shovel it off into the front yard.” Damn. That would have been easy.

It was about one in the morning. Cold. Snowy. With the threat of eviction hanging over our heads, we had to think quickly. A couple of snow shovels, a borrowed pick-up truck, and a sheet of plastic later, we were in business. We constructed a slide of sorts and shoveled the sand down the slide into the truck. It actually didn’t work too poorly. Only a couple hundred pounds escaped to the front lawn, I’d say.

By four o’clock or so the beach was gone, reduced to nothing but a memory and some severely weakened property. Poor Chemo. But she's still hanging on. I don't think that I would tempt fate by actually walking on it ever again though. 

In the end, it turns out that we aren’t that much different than the inappropriately dressed skank that, upon re-wintering, reverts back to her low-rider jeans that show off the top of her ass crack instead of the bottom of it. Climatic retardation brings out an exaggerated aspect of our warm-weather personalities. For the skank, her best weapons are her apparently over-used body parts. For people like us, it’s being a moron in a somewhat intelligent way.  Outdoors.

I’m not sure if you could blame any of us. But now I live in an apartment with a much larger porch. And what’s life unless you constantly outdo yourself?