Is It Summer Yet? Blog Hop

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Is It Summer Yet? Blog Hop

is it summer yet blog hop Is It Summer Yet? Blog Hop

Hi, followers and guests!! I am involved in a getting-ready-for-summer themed blog hop and so in honor of that, I will share with you my favorite beach memory!!

A Beach Memory “Caleb the Lifeguard”

The movie 10 with Bo Derek came out in 1979 when I was an impressionable 15 years old. As a fifteen-year-old living in a strict Catholic Italian home, I was not allowed to actually go to the movie theatre and see 10, as it was rated R, and that was for 17 year olds. However, the 1-10 rating system, directed mainly at women in swimsuits, at least in my personal life experience, did not pass me by. We (the group of teenage girls from nearby towns, who spent our days at Crane Beach in Ipswich, Massachusetts) all longed to be a 10; it was a singular life goal for many of us. Being a 10, however, was not an easy status to achieve. You had to be pretty and you had to be fit. You also had to be tanned. Malibu Barbie meets real life, to give you a proper visual image. And so during the day I pedaled my older sister’s hand-me-down ten-speed bike the forty-five minute trip to the beach, rotated repetitively from belly to back on my beach towel in an effort to roast my skin to a golden brown evenly on both sides, skipped lunch to eat a Snickers bar from the snack bar (250 calories and it gave me a chocolatey boost in energy), and strutted on the sand. The sand-strutting was a very important part of my days spent on the beach, for reasons to be detailed later. Every afternoon I rode that rickety bike home, and headed off to the ice cream parlor to scoop hard homemade ice cream that I refused to let myself eat (but I consoled myself with the fact that the act of scooping provided an excellent bicep workout.) Now, the lifeguards at Crane Beach were given great responsibility. Please understand that in my teenage eyes, these were the ultimate men (most of them rising college freshman, maybe a rising sophomore or two)—and they were in full control of the beach, sporting orange shorts that proclaimed them potential life-saving heroes, and wearing deep brown tans to die for. These young men were also endowed with the lofty task of being the “raters” of all female teenagers who roamed the beach. And let me tell you, being rated a 10 by a lifeguard was the stuff dreams were made of. Hence, the sand-strutting. My girlfriends and I dedicated a good portion of our day to sauntering past the tall lifeguard chairs, pretending not to notice that the occupants were staring us down and/or sizing us up. We were oblivious to their ogling analysis. (Uh huh…right.) There was one lifeguard in particular, whose number ranking meant the world to us. He was called by the female teenage masses, “Caleb the lifeguard.” (I know, how very creative of us.) Caleb, a rising U Mass freshman, was every bit a man to a rising high school sophomore like me. He was tall (probably to the tune of 5’8”, but he seemed towering at the time), dark (Malibu Ken-like tanned skin), and handsome (although I can’t recall his face.) He was also the strong (he had a trace of definition in his biceps), silent (didn’t have too much to say) type. And he was “Caleb the lifeguard”, which made all of the difference in the world. On my day of reckoning, otherwise known as the day of my number rating, I was all kinds of nervous. I must have sand-strutted past Caleb the lifeguard twenty-five times, as I knew he needed to see my bikini-clad form from all angles in order to make the most sound judgment on my number, whether it be a lowly 1 or a soaring 10. At the end of this exhausting day—I must have sand-strutted five miles at a minimum—he approached me by the bike rack, and saying absolutely nothing, handed me a curled up scrap of a napkin from the snack bar. After he scurried silently away, I unrolled it.

Move over Bo Derek, Mia is an official ten.

And then, from twenty feet away, another minor miracle occurred. Caleb the lifeguard turned around, removed his super-cool aviator sunglasses and shouted, “My friend told me where you live—I’ll stop by your house tonight!” Not only was I a 10, but my dreamy beach life was going to make a move into my real life. Here’s a bit of info for you: mothers of fifteen-year-old girls are not super-thrilled when rising college freshman lifeguards visit their daughters at night after a day at the beach. When Caleb the lifeguard arrived, we were stiffly shown to the “fancy living room” where I could “entertain.” And I meant “entertain” with nothing but lively conversation and longing smiles. After half an hour of awkward silence, during which my patrolwoman of a mother paced loudly back and forth past the entrance to the living room, Caleb the lifeguard rose from the “fancy” velvet couch and I walked him to the door. Naturally, Mom hovered, ensuring that her sweet fifteen-year-old daughter would make it to sweet sixteen and never been kissed, but little did she know that the ship had already sailed on that several years before. And once Caleb the lifeguard had closed our back door, she spoke the words that until today ring in my memory. First, she pulled me back to the fancy living room where we had so awkwardly sat, ran her hand over the surface of the couch where Caleb the lifeguard’s blessed butt had resided, and hissed, “That boy’s bathing suit better not have been wet.” Sometimes fantasies are better left in the fantasy realm, and clearly my “day of rating” by “Caleb the lifeguard” was better left to the wistful beach, because at the moment of truth, it really didn’t matter if I was a ten or he was a celebrated lifeguard, what really mattered was whether or not Caleb the lifeguard left a damp butt print on my Italian mother’s favorite velvet couch.

I am giving away a prize pack of a beach towel and a copy of an eBook of one of my backlist books. Enter by clicking on the image of the prize pack. There is are prizes that Queer Town Abbey is giving away enter here: a Rafflecopter giveaway