An archaeological dig through my beach bag

When it comes to any sort of packing, I’ll confess.  I’m no good at it.  

For example, a weekend getaway for me requires, at a minimum, a steamer trunk and an expandable carry-on bag.

My worst packing disaster happened years ago when I volunteered to chaperone a Boy Scout overnight trip aboard the Battleship Texas. Naturally, I packed a large rolling suitcase for our two-day adventure because apparently, I believed I'd be spending the weekend aboard a Carnival cruise ship instead of a World War II battleship.

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Unfortunately, I neglected one tiny detail.

You don't wheel luggage onto a battleship. You carry it down a nearly vertical steel ladder. When I arrived, a very kind dock worker was waiting to help passengers board.

Then he saw my suitcase.

He stared at it for a moment, looked back at me, and said, "This ain't the Four Seasons, lady."

It was the first and hopefully the last time I've needed a dock worker just to support my packing habits.

Unfortunately, this packing problem extends to purses, backpacks, gym bags and countless other means of transporting assorted “necessities” from one place to another.  Probably the most confounding of all of these is my beach bag.

For starters, I should mention that I have many beach bags.  When I’m heading out to the beach, I usually just grab the one that’s the most convenient.  I barely need to glance inside because I usually spot what I’ll need in any bag I choose. This is probably where the problem begins.

If archaeologists ever discover one of my beach bags centuries from now, they'll conclude they have uncovered the remains of an upper-middle-class suburban mother from the early twenty-first century.

The evidence will be overwhelming. Here’s what they’d find:

• Six beach towels. Why so many?  No clue.  I started the summer with three towels. By August, I apparently own enough to open a Hampton Inn.

• Seven empty sunscreen bottles. Unlike the beach towels, I know exactly how this happens.  You pick up a can of sunscreen and spray until it’s barely coming out.  You shake it a bit and spray some more. Bang on it and spray a little more. Rather than give up on it completely, you throw it in the bag and grab another can and do the same thing until you’re covered.  I’m not entirely sure of the psychology of all of this.  Do you expect more sunscreen to miraculously manifest the next time you pick up the can?  Well, it doesn’t.  So instead of cans of sunscreen, you end up with a bag of trash.

• Ten pairs of goggles, some with one or both lenses missing. This one is a complete mystery to me.  Every Memorial Day weekend, I buy two new pairs of goggles.  I’m not sure why I do because no one in my family ever asks me, “Hey, do you have any goggles?”  I don’t even use them anymore ever since I quit voluntarily submerging my head underwater.  That’s because saltwater doesn’t mix well with my “natural” hair color.  Yet, it never fails.  By Labor Day, I have enough goggles in my bag to outfit the entire U.S. Swim Team.  

• A melted granola bar fossilized into what experts initially mistake for volcanic rock. In addition, there are probably a few half-eaten bags of peanut M&Ms with the contents hardened to initially confuse the experts into thinking that they’re colonial era musket balls.

• Enough loose sand to convince researchers this woman actually lived on the coast, despite records indicating she resided thirty miles inland. If I ever decide to move inland, I'll simply empty three beach bags into the backyard and list the property as "waterfront."

For these poor archaeologists, the mystery won't be how she died. The mystery will be why she thought carrying all of this was a good idea.

Gif by HallmarkChannel on Giphy

And if that’s all that was in that bag, that would be one thing.  There’s more.

Certainly, there would be at least three books tucked inside with bookmarks indicating some effort to actually read.  Most likely, they would be found at pages 17, 21, and 25 respectively. There might even be a fourth book without a bookmark which would beg the question.  Did she finish this one or never start it?

Inevitably, there would be lots of random things some of which have zero connection to the beach: hotel key cards, a single sock, ten hair ties, one broken flip flop, broken sunglasses, a dried-up marker, melted Chapstick, ketchup packets, Target receipts faded by time and sunscreen, and LOTS of loose change.

I’m glad my beach bag isn’t human because I feel that if it could talk, it would be very judgmental.  It might go so far as to call me a “slob” which I feel is grossly unfair.  Cleaning out a beach bag is not high priority nor should it be with all the other tasks life throws at you.  Now if it’s my purse talking, that’s a different story.  My purse can call me whatever it wants, and I won’t argue.

Besides, on the rare occasions I actually take the time to clean out a beach bag, that’s when everyone needs something.  My husband scrapes his foot on seashells and there are no Band-Aids.  Suddenly, a group of my son’s friends want to go snorkeling.  Where are the goggles? Everyone is suddenly hungry.  “Mom, I thought there were crackers in here.”  The truth is this isn’t so much a beach bag as an emergency preparedness kit.

Gif by showtime on Giphy

So, I've stopped apologizing for my beach bag.

Yes, it's heavy. Yes, it contains enough supplies to survive a Category 4 hurricane. Yes, archaeologists may one day mistake it for a suburban burial chamber.

But someday one of my children will inevitably ask, "Mom...do you happen to have . . ..?"

And before they even finish the sentence...

I'll say, "Check the beach bag."

Because the beach bag knows.

The beach bag always knows.