Story time | Sharks & Sand Castles

I've realized, that on the sidebar, it says that I share my "daily ordinary adventures" on this blog and I've never shared any. I came across this photo and it reminded me of the time that my family was on vacation in South Carolina. So today I'm going to tell you about the time my siblings and I unintentionally swam with a shark or dolphin. Could've been either.

Fact: On beach vacations we spend most of our time floating on inner tubes and splashing saltwater in each others faces. It's fantastic.

Enter Narration

My feet hit the boardwalk and I skipped down the wooden steps until I felt the hot sand beneath my feet, the seagulls flew above me, and I could feel the breeze twirling my hair into tangles. "I want to live on the beach someday."  I thought.

There were crabs on this beach, sunburnt crabby people and actually crabs. There were also jellyfish, my insides turned at low tide when I looked down at and nearly stepped on one. People fished and bird watched on the beach. All this to say, there was a lot of wildlife everywhere.

I was building a sand castle and imagining a world where it was always summer, a world where the air always smells like sunscreen and coconut oil. I dug my toes deep into the sand and shuffled them around until I felt the coolness beneath them. South Carolina is a nice place, but the happening of that morning still haunts me.

That Morning

 "Come on Carley, we're going swimming." Aaron and Samantha had their beach towels and inner tubes and they motioned for me to join. I grabbed mine and we ran down the boardwalk. Our feet hit the wooden surface at an allegro tempo, we jumped off the steps and kept running until we met the water's edge. I looked up and saw the clouds. "Maybe it will rain today." But little did I know that the clouds weren't the only menacing thing that day. The cool water hit our toes - into the waves we went.

We were floating in the ocean without a care in the world. "We're pretty far out." "Probably further than we've ever been."  Nods of agreement were shared and we kept floating. We were probably talking about how we were going to go swimming in the pool or play cards later that day, we laughed about nothing in particular, and if you were on the shore you would've heard those laughs turn into shrieks, because what happened next surprised us all. 

Most Likely a Shark

 A gray fin went up and down in the water, and that gray fin wasn't something that we strained our eyes to see, that gray fin was between us and the beach houses. "Oh my gosh, do you see that?!?" "We're going to die!" "Ahhhhhhh! "What do we do?""I'm too young to die" "We're going to be eaten alive!". "Guys, calm down." Aaron said, "We'll be fine, it's probably just a dolphin, dolphins don't eat people - stick together." Samantha and I were in hysterics, the gray fin went up and down.

I was never one for studying the animal kingdom, but I was pretty sure that it was true: Dolphins are friendly and don't eat humans. But, I was also positive that I didn't know the difference between a dolphin fin and a shark fin. . . and in that moment it was most definitely a shark fin.  Aaron took off swimming as fast as he could until he was running through the water and finally on the dry sand. So much for "sticking together". Samantha and I panicked.

Sand Castles

I don't know how we got back. I don't remember if she pulled me to shore or if we both cried as we tried to make it to the beach without being attacked by the sea monster, or if we just screamed and got saltwater in our eyes and rode the natural percussion of the ocean back to the shore.  I can't remember any of the details, all I know is that I built sandcastles for the rest of the day and didn't set foot in the water.