Adulthood: Death By Beach Zamboni
Today I was wrong about something. I led myself to believe I hate being an adult. That is false. I’m an innately happy person who hates certain parts of being an adult. I hate paying bills, worrying and heartbreak. I hate cleaning my bathroom and via experience knowing someone is making a terrible mistake and not being able to do a damn thing about it. I hate things that I never would have noticed when I was young, like people that use the word “heady” over the age of 15 and adults who are scared for no reason. I hate that emotions don’t pass fleetingly like they did in childhood when all you needed to feel better was a Handisnack or to realize Are You Afraid of The Dark was on. All it took to turn a bad day around was a Mondo and a Gogurt in your lunchbox, a new Goosebumps book on the Scholastic order form or being able to stay up to watch the Olympics (why was that so cool?). When you’re a kid it’s ok to blow up GI Joes in the backyard to make them look like they stepped on landmines. When you’re a kid you are still within the age requirements to apply for Legends of the Hidden Temple and Double Dare. When you’re a kid you can’t wait to grow up. Then you grow up.
As an adult, some things stay the same. My sneakers are still rad and I still watch cartoons. I’ve realized a taste for beets will never “grow on me”. Last week, I wore a pair of shorts to work that I’ve had since 8th grade. I still love candy, still get motion sickness, still hate sleeping alone and am still terrified of centipedes. My ADD is worse than ever and I am having a hard time grasping that I will never be Mrs. Adam Yauch. We might live in the future, but at this point we are unable to return to an age where our biggest concern was if the high bounce in four square was illegal or not. Then again, we were right about some things when we were hurrying to get bigger. Turns out we CAN stay up as late as we want, eat ice cream for breakfast and watch R rated movies. Some things are even BETTER as an adult. I can wear a robe in public whenever I want (I always want), can light fireworks off my roof and can shred a head of lettuce into coleslaw with a hedge trimmer. As an adult I can go wherever I want, see whatever I want and do whatever I want. WRONG, that was a test. You have to work to get to that point in life. That’s the true definition of success in adulthood. Thinking about these things made me realize something. I love a lot and hate very little. This realization led to one of the more frustrating things I’ve thought about in a while...something that in my mind’s daily pondering competes with the Fermi Paradox and Schrodinger’s Cat. This conundrum has bothered me since I moved to the Windy City and I think today, I’ve finally had a breakthrough.
Why the hell people do people go to the beach in Chicago? It’s one of those things you just DO in the summer…like eating on the Big Star patio or going to a street fest. There are always too many people and you get drunker than you planned. Why do we do it? The beaches in this city are disgusting. The garbage to sand ratio is out of this world. I’m sure the water is over 50% motor oil and gasoline. If you do venture into the water, you’re standing on sharpish rocks and a decent amount of glass. It is an hour long expedition to even get to the beach, even if you pay to park in a lot. If you drive you have to park 7 miles away in a spot that is far too small while bikes zoom past your door at top speed. The sand temperature is usually 800 degress and you have to clear at least 24 cigarette butts out of the way to put a blanket down. There are babies in diapers who are stupid. They can’t do anything for themselves except take up beach space. It’s rude. Sure, there is a bar at one beach shaped like a giant boat, but drinks are expensive and the bro to tourist ratio is 100%. No thanks. I am not saying I never go to the beach…im just confused why I do it. Then it hit me like a CTA bus changing several lanes without looking.
You can do whatever you want at Chicago beaches. No one cares what’s going on. Ever. At all. It’s a total free for all, usually. I take that back, as long as you’re not a complete idiot you can do whatever you want. Sure, minors will get underage drinking tickets but all they need to remedy that is a different container. Sure, there are lifeguards. It’s their job to sleep until someone needs to be saved. The posted “beach hours”? Bigger joke. Anyone who has been to a Chicago beach knows the drill. The whistle blows at the “end” of beach time, everyone gets out of the water and pack up, the lifeguards leave, everyone else stays. This happens every single day.
Now we enter the sexy, mysterious world of NightBeach. NightBeach isn’t just a location, it’s a lifestyle. At NightBeach you can REALLY do whatever you want…except use the bathroom indoors, they most definitely lock those so be prepared to piss in a bush. There are garbage can fires, people in the shadows and beer. You could probably transition between Night and Day beach for a straight week and no one would notice. I like NightBeach significantly more than day beach. That is, except for one major detail. Beach zambonis are trying to kill me.
Everything at NightBeach is perfect until you hear that sputtering rumble. In one swift movement you’ve been blinded as you try to locate the source of the noise of technology past and the world’s most intrusive light. Then you see it: a beach zamboni. You know what I’m talking about : The tractors that comb the beaches at night. I call them beach zambonis and they are my arch nemesis. I would be ok with sharing Night Beach with them if they weren’t trying to hunt me down and flatten me. It’s personal, I’m not the only person who feels this way. I’ve asked around. Chances are you’re already having flashbacks to this very situation. There are vast expanses of beach to be combed, why is the square foot section I’m standing on the most important thing in the zamboni drivers life? Have they been given an exact target to hit and when they punched the coordinates into the zamboni gps it happened to be exactly where im standing or sitting? EVERY TIME I GO TO NIGHTBEACH? I think the zamboni drivers’ insatiable urge to destroy humans (specifically me) stems from both resentment of the beach dwellers who are not working the night/sunrise shift and subsection 12B of the beach zamboni driver employee handbook which states: I solemnly swear I will be as huge of a funsucking jerk as humanly possible. Don’t they understand I would trade places with them in a heartbeat? I would do almost anything to blaze through North Ave beach on high powered machinery. Instead of trying to exterminate me, a better approach would be to simply ask me to cover their shift so they can enjoy a beer in the moonlight. Recently, to demonstrate the zambonis’ hatred of me to my brother, I moved as closely to a dock and Lake Michigan as possible to see just what lengths a beach zamboni would go to in order to crush my body. We waited. We could hear it, but we couldn’t see it. It was like the water glass ripples in Jurassic Park. Impending doom was upon us. Suddenly, from the far end of the dock, out of the water emerged the Loch Ness Beach Tractor. I swear on my life a zamboni actually drove out into the water around a dock to try to eradicate me from the Earth’s surface. Scuba was there as a witness. Ask him. I have the vividmost of imaginations, but lake tractors are beyond me. Can you imagine the conversation between the zamboni driver and his boss if he’d gotten lodged in the lake? Honestly, I can’t believe it he made it out; he was pretty deep and that thing has to weigh 3 million lbs. His boss either would have been horrified that the zamboni company was about to be a city wide embarrassment or would have given the driver a raise for being so dedicated to the execution of subsection 12B. These are things that I think about it.
Soon after this, we packed up our things and went home. It only takes one sunrise Loch Ness Lake Tractor to kill the dreams of NightBeach. Besides, that’s another sign I’ve reached adulthood. I’m getting better at knowing when it’s time to go home.