A story about you.

I remember one morning after a friend and I had had a particularly big night and had slept over at the party house we decided to go to the beach. We had barely slept, we were still wearing our clothes from the night before, it was very very early and it was probably not a good idea. But we were young and invincible and had oversized dark glasses to protect us from the world so we went anyway.

We arrived at the beach and plonked our stuff down in a spot – it was about 6am on a Sunday and there were very few people at the beach. We threw off our docs and hitched up our dresses and spent a good half an hour splashing and wading in the shallows while debriefing the night before and giggling about boys. As time wore on, we started to sober up and our enthusiasm faded. The beach started filling with people in jogging gear and kids doing surf living saving classes. We retired to our little spot and just sat there for a while in silence watching the people do their morning things. As we were watching people do their wholesome early morning beach things it occurred to us that we didn’t look so wholesome, that our eyeliner was far from fresh and people probably weren’t judging us too favourably at that time.

This then led to a closer examination of the other people at the beach and we decided to guess at what their stories were, who they were with, why they were at the beach and how they had spent last night. There was a women by herself who was painfully skinny and painfully brown and on the side of 40 that to us at the time was an indication that life had pretty much ended. We decided she must have been a model when she was younger and had spent her teen years in Europe sleeping with photographers and snorting cocaine and that she had never adjusted to growing older and losing her beauty.

There was then a very wholesome looking young couple, he with one those of those almost military hairstyles, she with a full piece bathing suit and shorts over the top. It took them ten minutes to get all of their beach stuff set up, towels perfectly perpendicular, shoes neatly beside each towel, all items neatly stowed in bags, sun cream applied vigorously and then bags placed neatly at then top of each towel to stop them blowing away. They then both went for a swim, a proper, deepwater exercise swim, not the fun jolly splashing that most people do. We decided they were very Christian, very unmarried and very sexually frustrated.

I remember this day as being so much fun making up stories about other people and wondering whether or not we were right or not. Looking at body language to guess relationships and mannerisms to try to guess if people are happy or not. I still love doing this – turning people on the street into fictional characters and writing their stories. I’ve probably done it to you.