Going to Hell, Save You a Seat

Sunglasses on for maximum observation without detection, I am enthralled. And keeping up a very convincing nonchalant sun bathing charade. I am in a perfect spot. It could only be better if I had binoculars.

The park is clean as a whistle, neat and orderly. And to stay looking that way, with throngs of the unwashed public roaming about trampling things, the park has taken a few precautions to maintain its appearance. The most obvious of which is also the most annoying, to be frank. I've grown accustomed to it over the years, but there are those that are still somewhat stymied by it.

The little beach chairs that are neatly lined up around and in front of the water park sections stay immaculately orderly because they are zip tied together. Almost invisibly, but very tightly, leg to leg, base to base, so that 20 or 30 of them in a row, remain, well, in a row. 

The effect is that all the chairs become like rows in a movie theater. In order to take a seat, you have to walk from the end all the way down the row to the vacant chair. So movie theater etiquette applies.

Or you would think.

Maybe it is because they are low to the ground, or maybe because they are much coveted, or maybe because people are in a hurry to ditch their towels and run (like the mooning middle aged mom with with hangy bikini bottom) but people just seem to lose control of their sense of decorum when confronted with the inexplicably immobile chairs.

As I sat, staring from behind my Foster Grants, I observed the following departures from standard beach chair diplomacy:

The woman who yanked and yanked and yanked on a chair, disturbing all the occupants of the chairs in the row, breaking a sweat and huffing as she strained, insisting on pulling the chair from its moorings.  Only her kids could convince her that it was futile. Probably because they were impatiently waiting while she engaged in her foolishness. She eventually she gave up, and stepping back, discarded her beach coverup a few rows back and tossed the towels and bag and terry cloth muu-muu from 15 feet back, lobbing them over my head, and claiming any chairs they landed upon.

There were several people, men and women, who were incensed at the tethering situation and, refusing to go around to the end of a row to walk past other people and chairs that were spoken for to claim a vacant chair, instead opted to climb over, in all cases, not very gracefully, to reach the empty chairs of choice. I observed all manner of butts, crotches and shoe bottoms up close - waaaay too up close - as each person struggled to cross the divide by walking on the strappy seat surfaces of the chairs. And I was baffled how some were unapologetically willing to step on your stuff. Shoes, towels, book, beach bag. I secretly hoped to hex them with a bad sunburn.

But the beach chair etiquette breaches could not compare to the flagrant abuses at the food courts. When the kids had had their fill of the giant slides and the showers and pulleys and sprinklers and fountains, and were famished and ready for lunch, we headed off in search of food, and then in search of chairs. We found a table eventually, and had a front row seat for some very childish adult behavior.