Oh, yeah? You and whose army?” jeered a boy from the porch of a large old summer house near the beach. “We don’t need an army. We’ve got these!” yelled a girl from the lawn of another large house, right across the street. She brandished a water gun of fearsome proportions.
The half-dozen boys and girls around her jumped with excitement. One of them whirled a pink plastic bucket over his head by the handle, like a medieval knight with a mace, if a medieval knight were a barefoot 8-year-old on vacation.
“Oh really? Well, we’ve got … these!” the boy on the porch cried, as he and the children around him raised trembling water balloons in their hands to menace the foe.
“We’re not scared!”
“Neither are we!”
“So watch out!”
“No, you watch out!”
On the wide porch behind the first set of combatants, half a dozen adults sat in wicker chairs. The warm, moist ocean breezes acted on them like a mild sedative, as they leafed through magazines and chatted a bit.
The children’s trash talking, loud as it was, seemed simply part of the fabric of the day, no more disruptive than a gull’s cry or the occasional shout of a man selling ice cream.
“See you at two o’clock, then!” taunted the children on the lawn.
“Yeah, we can’t wait until two o’clock!” the children on the porch shot back.
The armies disbanded. Apparently someone’s mother was making several of the warriors run errands, so combat had to be postponed for an hour and a half.
But the clock was ticking, and while it ticked the water balloonists began militarizing faster than Germany in the 1930s. Amid cries of “hurry,” big children operated the water hose and filled balloons. Medium-sized children concentrated on tying knots in the balloons’ slippery necks. Littler children ran delivery runs back and forth between the production line and an armory that had been set up in a hidden area behind the porch steps.
Meanwhile, as if in a contrasting tableau from “War and Peace,” the adults pursued comically pacific amusements. One man sat on a sofa with his iPhone, silently testing his vocabulary with a foreign-language application. One man quietly went upstairs, and soon the sound of snoring floated down through the open windows. A young woman sat with her eyes closed, a book in her lap. An older woman sat gazing at the horizon in a trancelike state of seaside bliss.
And then suddenly, with terrible war cries and mighty splashes, with shrieks of joy and shouts of laughter, it commenced: The Mother of All Water Fights. Children from other houses began pouring down the street and choosing sides. Sherbet-colored missiles rained down from the porch, leaving satisfying splats. Arcs of deadly water rose up from the street, soaking the faces of the children up above. Soon between 25 and 30 children were surging around in the street, having the most marvelous time — for three hours.
What, you ask, were the adults doing? Nothing. It was a perfect summer afternoon.
Meghan Cox Gurdon’s column appears on Sunday and Thursday. She can be contacted at [email protected].
