When I was a little boy, we used to go down to the Connecticut shore every summer. My parents would rent a modest cottage a few blocks from the beach and we’d have a ball. Relatives joined us, as well as yearly returnees from all over New England. Each summer would leave me overflowing with memories. Almost all of them good. There was, however, one memory which repeated itself each year, and it was not good. It was ominous. It was the tuna warning.

Now, I’m not talking about there being tuna out in the water who were just waiting to do to little boys whatever it is a tuna would if it could. No, I’m talking about the tuna salad warning; the warning that said if you went swimming within 25 minutes after eating tuna salad, you would suffer severe cramps of the stomach and the legs, and probably even more body parts, and that you would then, ipso facto, drown.

Now my sweet mother was not alone in dishing out this warning to her kids. Each and every mother seemed to confidently pass along the same vital 100% scientifically-proven information. We were all told that several prominent universities, a couple of which were hard to get into, had proven that somehow, if you stuck your toe in the water only 24 minutes after finishing lunch, and your tuna had not quite made it out of your duodenum or whatever, it would get really angry and end up causing you to writhe in pain and die.

This warning was so threatening and came from such an unimpeachable source, that it was inviolate. No one, not even Chucky Razio from Hartford Connecticut — who was so brave he won three bottle caps by betting he could endure a hermit crab in his trunks for 10 seconds, not even Chucky — would hit the waves prematurely after some Chicken of the Sea. Consequently, it was not unusual to see crowds of frustrated boys sitting in groups on the beach asking people what time it was and then trying to correctly figure out if 25 minutes had gone by. They couldn’t stand the chance of erring on the early side.

Incidentally you may have noticed that I said a crowd of “boys” sitting around. Well, girls were also susceptible, but evidently their metabolisms work differently so that they had a different amount of time for their food to make it to the safe zone. I think it was a couple of minutes less, because I remember them romping into the water laughing at us guys.

Then came the really bad news. The munch, cramp, and die danger lurked in every food, not just tuna. Yes, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, Snickers, even something as supposedly healthy as an apple could all kill you. The thing was, it supposedly took a different amount of time to digest a lethal peanut butter and bread, 9 minutes. With jelly add another 2 minutes, and an Eskimo Pie, forget it. This made life really confusing for us math-challenged boys. It really came down to the issue of cumulative intake and collective action. Did the penalty minutes add up or run simultaneously? I mean, say you had a chocolate shake followed by some fries. Could you presume that the 12 minutes for the fries ran concurrent with the shake, or did it have to be tacked on later?

This was a crucial distinction that had to be made, especially because we were dying to get in the water and dunk those laughing girls. Then came mixed news. We had suffered for nothing. Somebody told me that their cousin’s friend read somewhere that it didn’t matter at all what you ate, or even if you ate, before going in the water. it wasn’t going to give you cramps and do you in. It’s all bull. So even though I just finished an eggplant sub with cheese and peppers, a meal that based on even conservative tabulations should have been worth a 48 minute digestion delay, I boldly moved toward the surf.

As I got closer and closer, a smorgasbord of memories and emotions welled up in me. Excitement as my pace quickened as I began to ready my headlong dive into a welcoming wave. And then cowardice as my body seemed to come to a complete halt in midair. I mean, who was I kidding? Zillions of admonitions, dating back to Phoenician moms keeping their date and goat cheese eating kids out of the Mediterranean, could not be so easily ignored. An immobilizing chill overcame me and I flopped straight down into the water. The loud slap of a bellyflop filled the air. I scrambled out of the water back to the safety of the sand. A smart-alecky eight-year-old who’d seen my awkward splash tosses me a sarcastic “nice dive.”

I ignored him. After all, he couldn’t have known how close I’d come to death by lunch.

Stephen Neigher is a screenwriter who worked in TV and film in Hollywood for more than twenty years, a retired professor of screenwriting at UNC Chapel Hill and is considered by many to be quite good looking.

Chapelboro.com does not charge subscription fees, and you can directly support our efforts in local journalism here. Want more of what you see on Chapelboro? Let us bring free local news and community information to you by signing up for our newsletter.

Related Stories
None