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Annie, Beach, blog, Daily post, family, friends, hail, laughter, life, love, rain, storm, writing prompts
DAILY PROMPT
Sudden Shifts
You’re at the beach with some friends and/or family, enjoying the sun, nibbling on some watermelon. All of a sudden, within seconds, the weather shifts and hale starts descending form the sky. Write a post about what happens next.
Ahh a day at the beach with family and friends. The weather was a perfect eighty nine degrees with a west wind. The wives and mom’s were sitting in their beach chairs with their feet in the water as the kids played with their Dad’s in the surf around them.
The rest of the guys were standing in the water drinking spiked beverages in their cups with straws as they talked guy talk.
Lunch time. The women decided to bring the children up on the warm sand. They dried them off one by one and sat them in a row on the blankets. It’s as if they are baby birds waiting for their moms to fetch them some worms.
Each child gets their choice of either tuna or peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a cool drink. The adults decide it’s time for some more adult fruit punch. Everyone is laughing and just enjoying the perfect day.
I stick my hand in the cooler and grab the container of cut up watermelon. As I hand each child and adult male a triangle piece with a napkin the sun suddenly decides to hide behind a huge cloud.
I look at the rest of the women and say, “WTF.” The kids don’t care, they just continue eating their melon. Their content as each has the juice of the delectable fruit running down their mouth. The moms on the other hand decide it’s getting a little cool and rummage through their beach bags for cover-ups.
The guys think we are all over reacting. They give us ladies the weather report as they check their cell phones. My hubby says, “It’s just a huge cloud. You ladies need to chill out. The weather station says clear sky’s all day. Give it a few minutes and that cloud will pass.”
As the mom’s clean their children’s faces with baby wipes. We tell each other that the cell phone weather man isn’t always right. We agree that that cloud is about to break open.
Just then the wind picks up. And we each grab a child and huddle under the large umbrella.
The men are laughing at us. That’s when the sky opened up. Now it’s the ladies laughing as the men try to get under the umbrella with us. And for the next ten minutes the rain pours down all around us. Then came the golf ball sized hail that bounced off the umbrella and the sand.
People all over the were running for cover. Our men took video’s of the chaos that was happening all around us up and down the beach.
The kids were all in the safe arms of family and friends as we all huddled together under that extra large umbrella with the blankets wrapped around us all. The same umbrella that non of our men wanted to bring today.
It was fun listening and watching the kids faces. They got a kick out seeing all the people running, grabbing kids, towels and blankets. As we looked around the beach was now deserted. There were coolers, chairs, buckets and remnants of families that were just there a few minutes ago.
We were all warm, dry and making memories that would last us all a lifetime.
Then as fast as the hail wind and rain started it stopped. The dark cloud moved out to sea. The sun came back out and was shining just as brightly as it did before. It was as if nothing had happened. The beach filled up again.
We each ventured out from under that umbrella. I started to laugh as I looked at the men and said. “I bet the next time we say put the umbrella in the SUV we won’t hear a peep out of any of you.” The ladies laughed with me as the men grumbled and took the kids by the hands and headed back to the water.
All in all it was a perfect day at the beach with family and friends.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it…
http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/sudden-shifts/
