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I was at the Fort Lauderdale beach the other day, as I often am – a breezy and sunny morning with small waves on the sea and carloads of people arriving to enjoy it all. I enjoyed watching them enjoy it. One young couple pulled up in a white sedan with Florida plates. But they clearly were tourists in a rental car. I watched this pretty woman bound out of their car the moment it was parked. She was wearing high heel boots that looked too warm for South Florida, as if they had come here from a northern state or Canada or Europe or somewhere. The first thing she did was peel off those boots and the socks underneath. She was like a kid who couldn’t wait to go all barefoot on the beach. I seem to recall that the guy removed his shoes too before they went walking off merrily together for a while.
People just can’t get their shoes off fast enough when they’re on the beach. It always amuses me for some reason. There really is something that seems childlike about it, in the best sense. Playful, joyful. Uninhibited. They want to feel the squish of the sand between their toes and the heat of the sun’s warmth radiating against the soles of their feet. They want to feel free and exposed in a way most adults usually aren’t. Like children.
That same day at the beach, I saw this kind of behavior repeated a number of times. But one family of four stood out for me. They were German, if I overheard their conversation correctly. Their white rental van pulled up to the curb and the doors slid open immediately. A mother and two kids popped out wearing shorts or capri pants. And no shoes. Dad was in sandals and, thankfully, had no socks. But there was an expression on their faces, especially the mother’s face, that I found charming. Standing in her bare feet, she kept looking up into the sky as if to absorb the sun’s rays. She was smiling a smile of pure delight. The kids were soaking up the heat too, grinning and bouncing around eagerly. Even Dad obviously was pleased to be away from the dreary confines of Stuttgart or wherever it was. Then they all walked on to the beach to put that warm sand between their toes. Probably this is what they’d been dreaming about for months, warm sunshine in winter. They were on the Fort Lauderdale beach. At last.
People just can’t get their shoes off fast enough when they’re on the beach. It always amuses me for some reason. There really is something that seems childlike about it, in the best sense. Playful, joyful. Uninhibited. They want to feel the squish of the sand between their toes and the heat of the sun’s warmth radiating against the soles of their feet. They want to feel free and exposed in a way most adults usually aren’t. Like children.
That same day at the beach, I saw this kind of behavior repeated a number of times. But one family of four stood out for me. They were German, if I overheard their conversation correctly. Their white rental van pulled up to the curb and the doors slid open immediately. A mother and two kids popped out wearing shorts or capri pants. And no shoes. Dad was in sandals and, thankfully, had no socks. But there was an expression on their faces, especially the mother’s face, that I found charming. Standing in her bare feet, she kept looking up into the sky as if to absorb the sun’s rays. She was smiling a smile of pure delight. The kids were soaking up the heat too, grinning and bouncing around eagerly. Even Dad obviously was pleased to be away from the dreary confines of Stuttgart or wherever it was. Then they all walked on to the beach to put that warm sand between their toes. Probably this is what they’d been dreaming about for months, warm sunshine in winter. They were on the Fort Lauderdale beach. At last.
posted by LauderBLOGGER at 11:24 AM
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