Home » Crimson's Creative Challenge » Adventure at the Beach – Crimson’s Creative Challenge #37

Adventure at the Beach – Crimson’s Creative Challenge #37

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Time to participate in Crispina’s Creative Challenge… I have totally cheated as there is one little umbrella, or parasol, in this pic, whereas my story involves hundreds. Still. It is where this photo brought me and I’m feeling particularly mushy this evening so. There. The pictures I have added are not from the time of my story but close enough and damned if I can find them anyway in the helter-skelter that is my basement.  I fear there will be no order till way after golf season, and we are comfortably buried under at least four feet of snow, so please, bear with me and use your imagination…

 

Adventure at the Beach

“Mommy told me to make sure I know where our umbrella is, just in case.  She worries too much. I’m going on an adventure.” He made his way to the beach, intent on finding some shells…

 

“Where’s Aidan?”  Panicked, three of us four adults went searching, while I stayed put with the other kids.

 

“Where’s our umbrella? They all look the same.” Aidan started to cry. A lifeguard found him and brought him to us.

 

My poor husband had walked far, searching. He had worked himself into a tizzy, already running in his mind what his son was wearing, how to describe him to the police… We had no cell phones then and couldn’t notify him so we had to wait for his return.

By the time he did, he was a complete basket case. He broke into tears upon seeing his baby, safe and sound.

“Don’t you ever do that to me again!”

 

Word count: 154.

Aidan and Me
Mick and Aida

74 thoughts on “Adventure at the Beach – Crimson’s Creative Challenge #37”

  3. Awww, those photos!!!!
    And, yes, I can think of little more frightening than losing sight of your child on a crowded beach or a mall or a forest or … anyplace where they might come to harm!

    Liked by 2 people

  4. You paint the very real panic of a misplaced child. The thoughts that go through the mind, already working through what to do if the child isn’t found. I’ve been there Dale. I had nightmares for several years after. A three-year-old lost in a busy story. One moment there, the next gone.

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  7. I’m glad all was OK (of course). I think every parent has had that moment of panic–even if it’s only for a few seconds. I remember my mom telling me about a time when my brother got lost on the beach, and then finally showed up with lifeguard in their beach car perfectly happy. I think he was a toddler.

    Also, you didn’t need an explanation. Obviously there are other beach umbrellas just beyond the range of the photo. 🙂

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  8. Well done re: the prompt. Easy for the reader to feel along with you here. I think our generation has fears our parents seldom felt, back when they let us roam all over the city by ourselves. Unless you were the Rockefellers, you needn’t worry anyone would kidnap your child.

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  9. I have a childhood memory of turning round from the sea and being totally lost as to where I needed to return to. All I could see was lots of people, towels, wind breaks and buckets and spades. Well, here I am, safe and sound. No idea where Mum and Dad are though!!!!!

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    • I think this is exactly what happened to Aidan. And of course, our parasol was red and there were a bazillion red parasols (to him)… He started walking towards the wrong one and that was it…

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  11. Q,

    That’s too scary. Where one minute feels like an hour and every possible horrible scenario runs through your head on a loop. I was so relieved when my kids made it to an age where I couldn’t find them and I didn’t look, LOL.

    And the umbrellas . . they all kind of do start to look the same when the beach is packed to the rafters with beach goers. Poor Aidan probably had a million bad ending scenarios running through his little head too! But all was well with the way it ended. Probably with a nice meal and relieved laughter.

    B

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  16. Haven’t read any of the comments, so maybe I say something you read a few times before….
    Losing your child anywhere is a nightmare; I got lost once on the terrace of Zurich Airport (back in the times when I was really small and very young AND you could, for a small payment, do ‘window travelling’ on a terrace, watching planes fly off and landing. And you know why I got lost? I scraped off a chewing gum from the floor and didn’t find my dad anymore…. 😉 I THEN, in more than mild panic, cried and screamed with terror and lurched for the leg of a man who turned out NOT to be my father….
    I taught my son to swim nearly before he could walk, because we spent much time at the shore of Lake Zurich and I had nightmares galore of him drowning, nightly. Not only that he simply did NOT sleep (ever) except when we were not at home – so, not sleeping, hours of crying AND the drowning on a regular basis had me wrecked for many, many years. He took ‘baby swimming’ twice per month and every night he drowned…. Then he got lost all the time because, being himself, he had no time to control where his mum was, he found a friend or many friends and off he was, never saying where and with whom and doing what – and his fraught mum found him, 20’ later (having screened the shore and water, screamed through the micro of the restaurant his name) playing football with some other kids. And I could never write anything in only 150 words, sorry!

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    • Oh my goodness, Kiki!
      Talk about working yourself up into a tizzy. Methinks you truly did almost make yourself mad with this.
      That said, it is terrifying to be lost (not that I remember ever doing so) and to lose your kid. 20 minutes feels like 20 years.
      As for writing in under 150 words, well… it does take practice 😉

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