Flying Umbrella of Death

It's cloudy and raining on the front side of the house, but sun shiny on the other. Seriously, our house is not that big!

Now, back to the umbrella story. Let's see if I can tell this right...


We had a little rain when we first got to the beach on Saturday and Sunday (scattered showers), so Monday was the first real day to drag all the goods out to the beach. The beach umbrella is my savior because the sun starts to take its toll on me, but I want to stay out, so it gives me some shade. The last time we were at the beach we bought this really cool PVC pipe with an auger on the bottom that screws down into the sand to secure the umbrella so the winds won't blow it away. So first thing, I screw the anchor into the sand and we sent up for a day at the beach.

After we'd been out for a while, these four foul-mouthed 17-ish-year-old girls come down and sit just behind us and to the side. They're sitting back there in their string bikinis with the strings of their tops undone to not get tan lines when a sudden wind gust comes, grabs the umbrella, pulls it out of the sand, anchor and all, and sends it somersaulting toward them.

So as the "Flying Umbrella of Death" comes hurling toward these girls, they are left with one of two options: jump up to avoid the umbrella and risk losing their tops, or face possibly getting impaled by the point of the umbrella. Well, they all four chose impaling, and luckily only one was struck, slightly across her shoulder, as the umbrella fell in front and slightly on top of them.

They didn't sit near us the rest of the week.

It was really something you'd expect to see in a sitcom.