What's So Great About Sand?

Seeing as it's summer, I thought I would tackle something that has always been a mystery to me, that raises its head during the summer months.
People like to go to the beach when it's hot. But I've always failed to see the attraction of sand. Why intentionally go where sand is? The human need to go out of their way to seek out sand, I will never understand. Hm, that rhymes.

Okay, what is sand? It is little granules of rocks, a first cousin to dirt. Explain to me why this is an attraction. People take time out of their life, drive to the beach, and sand gets in your shoes, in your socks (if you wear socks to the beach), and everywhere, all over your clothes and beach towel. If you want to clear the sand off the bottom of your feet, your natural first impulse is to stick your feet in the ocean. But then you can't get out of the ocean without putting the sand back on your feet. Your best option is to try and put flip-flops on in the water. Not only is this awkward and challenging, but then you have wet flip flops.

Then the sand that is on your clothes and person gets in the car on the way home, and in your house. You have to take a shower to clean it all off. Then you spend the rest of your natural life finding and cleaning the sand that came back from the beach attached to your clothes. Why people intentionally seek out this experience I will never know.


Fascinating isn't it?

Inevitably, people figured out a way to use sand to torture people. Burying people in the sand except for their heads and letting the sun burn them to death. It's hard to see sand as anything BUT a way to torture people. When you're under the sand like that and you can't move your arms and legs at all, it's easy to think "this is fun". You are totally at the mercy of the sand and the sand-torturer.

But sand isn't all nuisance and torture device. Great innovations have been made of sand, such as hourglasses and glass. Where would we be without those inventors who made something out of nothing? I congratulate them. I say, put sand to work for us, not against us.

So while everyone is out there at the beach this summer getting tiny granules of dirt-like particles all over their clothes and body, I say have fun and godspeed. At least no one is forcing me to do it.