Riptide look-alikes

It didn’t dawn on me until I was safe back on the beach

- SALLY DECKER, JUPITER, FLORIDA

WITH MY HUSBAND away on a business trip, I planned to spend a quiet weekend at home. But when my friend Chickie and her husband, Dom, invited me to join them for an afternoon at the beach, I was tempted. “I had an asthma attack yesterday, and it really tired me out,” I warned them. “So I’ll probably just lie out on the sand. It’s too humid for me to do much.”

A few hours later, relaxing under a sun umbrella after a picnic lunch, I was glad I’d come. Chickie and Dom went for a dip. They liked to go far out before swimming parallel to the shore. Shielding my eyes, I looked for them in the water, but they were too far away. The tide was low, and we’d laid our towels in a grassy area quite far from the surf. I soaked up the sun until I got too hot, then took a walk down to the shore.