A Day at the Beach: In Memory of Joe Mundo

Guest post by Frank Mundo, one of TJCC’s regular contributors. You can follow Frank on Twitter and check out his other fabulous writing at Examiner.com

I liked the beach. But the ocean, the ocean was scary, and I didn’t like the ocean.

The ocean had strange animals living in it, and that was scary to me. Jellyfish and sharks, strange animals like that, just swimming around, waiting for the chance to eat me. I was only ten and the ocean was scary. But I did like the beach, that’s for sure. The beach was safe. Sometimes the sand got really hot, and it was hard to walk on the hot sand, but that was it. Nothing wanted to eat me on the beach. I liked the beach a lot.

My brother and my sister were older. They loved the ocean. They said that I was just too scared to go into the water. That my parents shouldn’t even have brought me along with them. That I was just a baby, and that I was getting in the way of their having a good time. That I was always doing things like that, little crybaby things like that. Actually, it was my sister who said most of it. My sister was mean and she knew it. We all did. And she loved the ocean. She’d stay in there all day. My brother told me not to worry about it. He said that my sister was just upset because my sister wasn’t really my sister at all. My sister was actually adopted.

“No, seriously,” he said. “And she really belongs to the ocean and its inhabitants. That’s why she gets so mad when you don’t want to go into the ocean.” He could tell that I didn’t believe him, so, “No, it’s true,” he swore. “Our parents, they just found her washed up on the beach one day when they were on their honeymoon, and out of pity, they took her home and pretended she belonged to them, when really, she was actually a runaway creature of the sea. You see, that’s the real reason we always come back to Ocean City every year. It’s so she can visit her real relatives who love her and miss her and want to see her sometimes, the sharks and jellyfish and the crabs, all of her real family and friends, you know? She doesn’t really know it, of course,” he said. “But that’s why she loves the ocean so much. Because she belongs here. This is her home. Besides, everyone should know who they really are and where they really come from, right?”

And I agreed.

But there was just one problem:

He had told me a similar story when we went to the zoo that time. He had said that my sister was really a monkey, and that her family didn’t want her anymore because of the way she smelled, and so she had come to live with us, with my parents actually, because I hadn’t been born yet. So, then I asked him about the monkeys and the zoo and all that stuff he had previously told me about our sister that time at the zoo. That’s when he explained to me that the monkeys were my sister’s mother’s family, and that her father’s family, the ocean dwelling monkeys, was forced to move back to the ocean after the divorce. “Just like we did when our mom left our dad, and we had to move from Laurel to Wheaton, remember?” Then he said that, “Even though two grownup monkeys love each other a whole lot, sometimes it’s just impossible for them to live together, that’s all.”

And that made sense. Just about all my friends’ parents were divorced. Shoot, both of our parents had been divorced and remarried, too, all before I was even born, and so why couldn’t the monkeys do the same thing? Also, I had this friend named Jason who was adopted by his parents when he was only four, and when his parents got divorced later on, he had to move to Chicago with his mother, while his father stayed in Maryland. It was just like what my sister had probably gone through.

Maybe that’s why she’s so mean, I thought. Her life has been pretty rough, only getting to see her real family maybe once a year.

And that made me feel better about the whole thing. My brother was really smart sometimes. He knew all about the grownup world. He knew everything it seemed.

But I still didn’t want to go into the ocean. No way!

I was still afraid of the sharks and the jellyfish and the crabs — even if we were supposedly half relatives and all. Besides, the waves were big and they would crash down onto the shore and make a lot of noise, and all this white foam would start to kind of hiss, you know? And I was afraid of the hissing white foam. Then I remembered seeing this TV show about electric eels, which were just like snakes, and so I thought that it was probably the electric eels that were responsible for all the hissing white foam, which really got me scared. It’s just that my brother once told me that electric eels were actually captured and kept in a giant tank so that the electric company could steal their electricity and they wouldn’t have to pay union wages.

My second dad was in a union for electricians, and he was always complaining about the non-union worker, “the electric eel scabs” my brother called them. He said that electric eels worked for nothing and under harsh conditions. “That’s why when it rains sometimes, the eels get fed up and go on strike, and that’s why all the power gets cut off. Because the eels come from the ocean, which has salt-water, and the rain doesn’t, and so they can’t work properly when it rains, see? Not enough salt,” he said.

I remember sitting on the beach that day.

Avoiding the ocean at all costs, and I was making this castle out of sand when my brother comes running out of the water, and he’s all excited and he says that he has just seen something incredible and he wants to show it to me. I told him no way, that I wasn’t going to go into the ocean no matter what incredible things he had seen. But then he said that I had to or else he was going to go and tell our mom about how we stole two of her cigarettes that time and smoked them up in the woods behind our house if I didn’t. I told him to go right ahead, that he’d just be getting himself in trouble, and so what would be the point? But when he started walking towards our parents, I don’t know, I got all scared, and I ran after him,  and said that, okay, I would go, just as long as he didn’t tell about the cigarettes. I was still afraid of the ocean. Sure. But I was more afraid of my parents getting mad and punishing me than possibly being electrocuted or eaten alive by one of my ocean half-relatives.

Once we got into the water, though, I got scared again and refused to go in any further than knee level. I told my brother that I was afraid of the waves and the hissing foam and the electric eels. He said not to worry, that it was no big deal. None of that stuff.

“First of all,” he said. “The ocean is made up of salt water, and everyone knows that salt water is softer than regular water. That’s why we put salt in the boiler at home,” he said. “Because it makes the water softer, you see? And second of all, it’s only two o’clock and, dah! The eels are non-union, remember? And everyone knows that scab workers work until at least six or seven–especially in the summer time when it’s hot, and everyone wants the air conditioning on.” Then I asked him about the hissing white foam.

“What about that?” I asked. “What about the foam?”

But then he called me a baby, and said, “Who the hell is afraid of a little foam? Foam is nothing. It’s just the air that escapes from all the shells, that’s all.” Then he went and found a shell, and just to prove he was right, he told me to put my ear to the shell and listen.

“You hear that?” he said. “That’s where the hissing foam comes from. It’s just the stupid air escaping from the stupid shells, that’s all. It’s completely harmless. Nothing to be afraid of.”

And it was true. The shells did hiss a little, and so I figured he was right.

My brother told me to hold his hand after that, and I did.

He said that the timing was the most important thing, that we had to get to this one particular spot before the next wave would come and ruin everything. He pointed to that spot.

The water was cold, too, and that didn’t help. But I wasn’t shivering because of the cold water. My brother didn’t seem to notice though, which was good. He was just staring out into the ocean, waiting for the right moment, and he had a huge smile on his face. Suddenly, he turned to me and asked if I was ready, but before I could answer, he started running, pulling both of us into the water to about chest level. I remember the soft sand, how my feet seemed to sink into it. It was cold and soft, silky between my toes. I was scared, but I knew I was safe for some reason, and I wasn’t afraid of that part. But then I saw this jellyfish looking thing swim by, and I started freaking out until my brother picked it up and told me what it really was.

“It’s just a stupid six-pack thing, that‘s all,” he said. “It’s plastic, see?” Then, and I’ll never forget it, then he turned to me and smiled and said, “All right, when I say three, hold your breath for as long as you can, okay?”

I said, okay.

“And no matter what,” he said. “Don’t close your eyes, okay. No matter what–promise?”

I promised. Then he started counting. “One¼two¼” I took a deep breath. “¼Three!” He said, and pulled us under.

Immediately, it got quiet.

It was dark and fuzzy too, but I could still see pretty clearly. He was still smiling and the hair on his head was standing up now, dancing with the current. It was really cool, too. It made it seem like his head was on fire or something, and his hair was like the flames, burning wildly from his head like that. Some bubbles escaped from his nose after that, and probably added to the hissing white foam above us. Then he pointed to this thing coming toward us. It looked like a giant steam roller of white foam slowly rolling in our direction. It was just a wave coming, but I wanted to get the hell out of its way and he wouldn’t let go of my hand.

The steam roller kept coming, faster and faster now, growing larger and larger. I was so scared, but there was nothing I could do. He had my hand and he wasn’t letting go. Besides, I had made the promise to keep my eyes open no matter what. And so that’s what I did.

The steam roller was right in front of us and so I braced myself in the soft sand. My brother was still smiling, and his head was still on fire. The next thing I knew, the steam roller went right by us, right through us really, and nothing happened except for a cold rush ran down my spine. It was weird. It was like the giant steam roller wave was some kind of spirit or something. And instead of crushing us, it went right through, just a cold rush of something, and then nothing, like we weren’t even there.

When we came to the surface, my brother was so excited.

“Wasn’t that cool?” He said.

“Yes,” I said. “Let’s do it again.” And so we waited for the next wave, and we did it again. We did it over and over after that, and each time I was just as surprised as the first time. The steam roller wave, the cold rush of water tickling my back. It was really exciting, each and every time. I was so surprised. The ocean, it looked so scary from the beach, so violent and wild. So dangerous. The way the waves pounded like some wild animal on the shore, and the way the foam hissed like a million angry electric eels. But it was calm, under the waves. It was so calm, so peaceful. All that salt had softened the water so much, and had made it so calm.

Driving home the next day, my mother asked if we’d had a good time.

My brother gave me a secret smile and I said that we had. My sister, however, was staring out of the window, sullenly, longingly, silently. For the first time ever I felt bad for her, and now that I knew all about her family situation, I wanted to let her know that I wasn’t afraid of the ocean anymore. I thought that might make her feel better. The ocean, I wanted to say, it might look mean and tough, but it’s not. It’s calm, under the waves, so incredibly calm. Instead I took my sister’s hand in mine, and she actually let me — for about a second, before she said:

“Don’t touch me, you little perv,” and then punched me in the arm.

My brother gave me another look as if to say “See? I told you.”

“Leave your sister alone,” my mother warned.

“Sister?” My brother whispered. “Yeah, right.”

Tagged as: Frank Mundo, Joe Mundo, Learning Moments, Writing