I'll Never Grow Up

Recalling an old, secret skill cultivated on the snow days of my youth and honed on the quiet beaches of family vacations, I, along with two other skilled sculptors, created another epic piece of sand art. Blueprints were drawn on a hand-smoothed spot of sand and the construction of the Ko Samet sand dog began with the amassing of a huge mound of our beach medium. In its initial stages doubters threw out mocking guesses of the sculpture’s final shape: A turtle? A rabbit? A cooked turkey? The lunacy of the pathetic guesses was matched only by the doubters’ lack of vision.

Through patience and resourcefulness, a formless mountain of sand began to take shape. Rocks, sticks and bottles of water became specialized tools. Still, we did not carve the dog out of the sand, we merely emancipated it from the depths of the beach. Our hands, our simple tools, only aided it. There soon was no doubt; the sand sculpture was not a turtle, not a rabbit, not a cooked turkey. It was the dog of all dogs: a Sphinx-inspired monument dedicated to all the strays who wander Ko Samet.

Soon we were not laughed at for our childish endeavors but were applauded for our monumental achievement. Thai beach goers politely asked to take pictures in front of the dog-Sphinx, and it was thus, despite its inevitable slip into the sea, immortalized in vacation photo albums.