A whistle.
I looked up at the lifeguard stand and the sunglassed teenager was waving me off. I turned around and tramped up the sandy incline to with my boogie board.
"No boogie boarding?"
The kid nodded in assent. "Two yellow flags," he said. "Rip currents right now."
"But we can swim?"
"Yep, you can swim, but no boogie boarding."
It didn't, to me, make much sense.
You mean to tell me that it was okay to go swimming in the rip currents with our frail little bodies—but not with our boogie boards? Effectively floatation devices lashed to our wrists?
As I trekked glumly away from the stand—boogie boarding is a blast—I noticed a surfer sitting patient on his surfboard out in the rippy waves.
Why was a surfboard okay but a boogie board verboten? The logic confused me, so later, back at the house, I looked it up—and immediately felt that I could have figured it out had I given it a few minutes thought.
What rhetorical question did the lifeguard expert ask in the article I found?
Which would you rather be stuck on for a few hours in the open water—a boogie board or a surfboard?
The size and material, he pointed out, are extremely different. A 10-foot fiberglass board, or a 3-foot foam one?
Boogie boards don't do so well after a few hours of being smacked around by chop. There's a false sense of security to them, though, that you don't want beach goers to lean into.
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