Descriptive Detail: A Day At The Beach

It was a bright and sunny day with the sun scorching above the sky blue beach. My family and I were on summer vacation in Alexandria, Egypt. I was 7 years old at the time. We all went to the beach on this luminous day. There were white sea gulls flying over the glittering water. The smell of the salty beach made us serene. My brother, cousin and I raced across the burning sand that made our feet sink into it and turn red; we ran into the beach for a swim while our parents set up the table and umbrella. We splashed the salty water all over each other. We held our breath, put our heads underwater, opened our eyes, and looked for sea shells. When we removed our heads from the water and looked at each other, our eyes were glowing red because of the salty water. It gave a burning and itching sensation in our eyes. We rubbed our eyes and then continued to collect shells. We collected clams, oysters, and the typical spiraled shells. We put our ears to the opening of the pure white shells and heard the tranquil sound of the waves of the beach. We gathered all our shells and put them in my cousins blue bucket. Our parents were sitting under the umbrella talking and reading magazines and newspapers. “Don’t go in too deep.” said my mom. “Don’t worry mom we’re not in that deep. We could still stand in that area.” My brother replied. So we ran back into the sparkling water and suddenly an enormous wave came crashing down with a thunderous noise onto us. We flew back closer to the shore with salt in our eyes, mouth, and nose and sand all over our bodies and hair. I felt a stinging burn on my left hand from my fourth finger all the way to the bottom of my thumb. I looked at my hand and realized that there was a glowing, pinkish-red, long scar on it. It looked as if I had been whipped. My brother had the same mark on his right arm and my cousin had one on his leg but both to a lesser degree than mine. We realized that there were jellyfish deep in the beach where we had gone into. The mark on my hand was getting inflamed and slowly started to bulge on my hand. We all quickly ran out of the water and went to our parents. I have no idea how I was able to hold my pain inside and not scream at the top of my lungs. The jellyfish sting was an itching inflamed burn, that just got more red and bumpy, and anything that touched it made it worse. My aunt quickly took me to the nurse on the beach and he dipped a piece of cotton into a jar of vinegar and wiped it all over the burning scar on my hand. It felt like a mosquito bite mixed with a burn from a stove, and the sting of a needle (vaccination); or more like burning flesh. The vinegar eventually decreased the bump but the mark of the sting was still evident. The nurse did the same for my brother and cousin but their wound wasn’t bumpy or long like mine. We don’t know where that jellyfish was because it was transparent and so swam unnoticed in the clear water. It probably came closer due to the wave and one of its tentacles just got caught on us. Later we went to the pharmacy and got cream that relieved the burn and made the scar disappear. This was a day to remember because despite the skin tearing burns we got from the sting of the jellyfish, we had an amazing time collecting sea shells that we have kept to this day. Every time we put our ears to the shells, we hear the sound of the waves in the beach and imagine ourselves when we were running into the water.