The thickening marine layer
drizzles its excess, watering vegetation, slicking the roadways and rendering
yesterday’s carwashes frustratingly futile.
Outside of St. Arbuck’s two TV
trucks with distended satellite uplink towers are parked in proximity to the
massive community cleanup effort being waged against the mountains of
marshmallows littering the main beach.
Yes, I said, “marshmallows.”
While no one is entirely certain
when the tradition began, each year following the Ocean Beach Pier fireworks
show, a massive marshmallow war is waged between several thousand participants.
And in honor of OB’s 125th
Anniversary I decided to join in the festivities.
Well before the fireworks finale,
the fight was on!
We started on the sand at the
main beach by the pier with a crew of eight, including my daughter, her husband
and several of their friends. But like an ever-growing amoeba we eventually
spilled over onto the area around Abbot and Newport Avenues where those of us
from the beach formed an ad hoc coalition to battle the guests of the Ocean
Beach Hotel who were ensconced on the balconies mercilessly peppering all of us
on the street.
They had the high ground...but we
had—Tat, da, da, dah!!!—SUPER MARSHMALLOWS!
Those suckers were the size of my
fist!
The ICBM’s of marshmallow
fighting.
The Electromagnetic Pulse Weapon
of sticky soldiering.
The Neutron Bomb of...okay, I’ll
stop.
At some point I discovered that I
had lost contact with our crew and there were only two of us left.
My aide-de-camp was a young,
German tourist who had come along with another friend of my daughter’s.
We
were a good team, scavenging the street for discarded ammo, passing it off to
whoever was in the most strategic position at the time.
The
most satisfying moment of the night came when I nailed a particularly arrogant
and quite drunk bloke on the balcony right in the kisser. Knocked his head backward and
dislodged his silly “gangsta” cap.
I
may or may not have done a joy dance in the street.
Mein deutscher Freund was laying
waste to any and everyone in his path. So effective were his throws that I
eventually abandoned my own efforts entirely, turning my energies, instead, to
the acquisition of ammunition for the rocket-armed foreigner.
So
enamored was he with the experience, he vowed to take the tradition back to
Germany with him.
At one point
everything came to a dead stop as a massive “boom” filled the air and the sky
to the south lit up with unusual intensity causing our surroundings to briefly
take on the appearance of broad daylight.
We later learned
the source of the illumination: San Diego’s famous Big Bay Boom, which was to be an eighteen minute fireworks extravaganza
shot off from four strategically placed barges, went bust as all of the
fireworks were triggered simultaneously through a technician’s glitch.
I
wouldn’t want to be that technician.
The
fifty thousand attendees were not amused. Not at all amused.
Back
in OB, the "Battle Royale" resumed, enjoyed with good-natured civility by all.
We, however, had
run out of ammo and, with arms hanging in limply by our sides, slogged through the tacky muck coating the streets
and sidewalks and made our way back to my daughter’s house to await the return
of our original crew.
I’m
happy to report that we had no casualties save for the soles of our shoes,
which had been rendered gummy, gooey horrors.
I’d
do it again.
Only
next time I’m bringing...a marshmallow shooter!
Oh
yeah!
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