Jean and Megan had to leave for Pennsylvania by noon. Without Megan, I'm very much singled out by my age/lifestyle.
Too old for the kids group, too young for the adult group. When we were younger, all my cousins would come down to the beach, bring friends and our sneering, quiet jokes about the adults and babies made us feel like owners of the house. We were young assholes.
It's strange how difficult it is to move on and mature, must be like this for everyone else, ri? Because my parental situation is a complete mess, I have poor frames of reference for adulthood.
Anyway, we hugged goodbye and sat down for pimento cheese sammies. Here's a soundtrack for the next section. It's considerably less introspective:
So, dad's brother took us crabbing and fishing in Colington.
The trip was to teach the ten year olds how to crab, but I had no idea either, can you believe I went 25 years without catching crabs? Yuk yuk yuk. Sorry.
This is how you crab:
Pack your fishing poles, net, and cooler. Then pick up bait at the bait store. You'll need shrimp, small fishies and my uncle also bought some big fish, but it's debatable whether they helped or not.
This was our bait. The shrimp was for the fishing poles. Yawn. We already know how to use fishing poles ... To crab, you pierce a metal clamp into the gills and through the mouth. The clamp is attached to a long string. Then you throw it into the water and let it sink to the bottom!
It's basically Tom Sawyer style fishing. Your fingertips become super sensitive to the little underwater nibbles. Once you feel a strong pull, you s-l-o-w-l-y pull the bait toward the surface. This can take minutes. Have the net ready and catch that sucker before he jumps off.
This is the crab that I caught. It was just over 4 inches. I had to put on my brave face for the rednecks though because I wanted to throw him back. Moment of silence for the crab.
You'd be surprised how effortless the transition from pants to no pants is. I'll consider my exercises in skinny dipping to be a helpful step.
Then we drove over to this little secret spot where the water is warm and the sand feels like cream. It's in Currituck Sound.
Tree branches bend low almost into the water and curtain the breadth of the sandy shore. Walking into the water feels like making a grand entrance onto center stage.
It's a quiet piece of land. If you wade into the seaweed, the small waves clap on your shins. Across your feet crawl the spidery legs of baby crabs.
And then at sunset, the water turns piglet pink and we sink our heads into the water and mermaid swim out to sea.
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