Sometimes, when you’re losing a soccer game 5-0, you just want to go home. Even when you’re the coach.
Sometimes, though, you need to forget about the whole miserable mess by taking your kid and a friend of his from the team to the boardwalk. Because as soon as you taste the crab cakes, you start to forget about the bad calls the referee made.
When you’re waiting for the ride that spins you around like a science project in a centrifuge, you may forget about the bad passes and the mis-kicks.
And then you can take out your aggressions in the bumper cars.
You can enjoy all that the Jersey Shore has to offer, or you can just decide that some of it is just too gross and order ice cream instead.
Or you can get funnel cake and then hold it while you stand next to your quickly growing kid, making you look like a middle school classmate of his. Which is kind of disconcerting.
Because if you’re going to drive way the heck down to the shore only to get clobbered in a soccer game, you need to forget it all and just eat funnel cake on the beach.
And jump in the waves in your soccer clothes.
Because that’s the only way you’ll stop thinking about the line-up for the next game and relax.
On a beautiful Sunday afternoon at the shore.