Holiday Truths – Top Four Beach Changers

Today we’re going to take a look at one of the most amusing and yet one of the most common of all holiday truths.

Holiday Truths - Beach with Windbreak, courtesy of geograph.org.uk author Kim Burton

Imagine the picture.  It’s the first day of your holiday in the sun and you’re lying on the beach.  You look up from your book at the people around you.  You are intrigued to see that, far from relaxing in the sun, several of them seem to be involved in some sort of exotic tribal dance.

So what are these strange people doing?  Well, they are engaged in one of the oldest of holiday truths of all time – that amusing beach activity of “changing”.  But did you know that all beach “changers” fall into four categories?  Please read on to discover more..

The Hopper

Often, the Hopper is a younger person, perhaps a child or a teenager,  perhaps less experienced in the art of changing on the beach.  Because it is an art, and one that gets better with practice.  At the beginning, everything starts off very well.  The child or teenager stands up, ties a towel round the waist and off come the outer lower garments such as skirt, trousers or shorts.

So far so good, but it’s the next bit that gives the Hopper his or her name.  We’re talking about the underwear removal stage.  Because the Hopper is unable to see what’s under the towel, and because only one hand is free to grab and pull that underwear (as the other hand is holding the towel up, just to be sure), the job becomes rather tricky.

“kicking forth like a move from some lost Egyptian dance”

One side of the underwear, the grabbed side, stretches downwards, while the other grips the hip, leg and knees for all it’s worth, finally snagging unexpectedly on the foot, causing a sudden pulling of the raised leg, loss of balance, and – you guessed it – a manic hopping session as the poor victim uses every ounce of balancing skill to remain upright, keep hold of the towel and free the snagged underwear from an ankle that is now kicking forth like a move from some lost Egyptian dance.

The Wriggler

Whereas the Hopper is usually a child or teenager, the Wriggler is generally a woman, usually of a “certain age”, a lady who prefers discretion when it comes to changing on the beach.  Her aim is to change her garments without anybody noticing whatsoever that she is demeaning herself by removing her clothing in a public place, albeit temporarily.

So, the poor Wriggler sits on her towel, and then summons her husband to give up his towel so that she can wrap it around her.  The plan is that by changing in the sitting position, she can do so stealthily, with dignity and even some style.

This is a sad misconception, because the Wriggler, far from being unnoticed, is actually one of the most glaringly

Holiday Truths - Lady on the Beach, courtesy of haroldolsen.com

obvious and entertaining of all “beach changers”.  It’s a problem of physics, you see.  The Wriggler is seated on the very undergarments that she is trying to remove.  Finding that they won’t budge, she balances on one hip, then the other, whilst simultaneously pulling on the side of the underwear on the raised hip.  The friction caused by the underwear jamming against the tightly-wrapped towel only serves to make matters worse.

“catapulted as much as ten feet”

Realising that absolutely nothing is moving, the poor Wriggler gets more and more frustrated and animated in her movements, gaining the attention of more and more onlookers.  Realising she has a growing audience, she reaches a stage of desperation known as the “Wriggler’s Undoing”.  Lifting both hips into the air, she holds her towel tightly in one hand and grips the underwear hard with the other, then with an almighty pull, her knickers come free, virtually catapulted as much as ten feet across the sand as her bemused audience looks on.

The Chinner

The Chinner is in a small minority of beach changers, but this method is rapidly gaining in popularity with younger men.  Indeed, I would not be surprised to find that future writers on the subject of holiday truths may report that “chinning” has become a new word in the beach vocabulary.

“lack of rear coverage”

Usually, Chinners are men.  This sexism arises because the Chinner’s method of changing offers no protection for the chest area – or the rear.  Because of this lack of rear coverage, the Chinner is nearly always restricted to those beaches where there is a cliff, sea wall or other vertical surface that he can “back onto”.

He takes one end or even just a corner of his beach towel, and wedges it firmly under his chin, leaving the length of the towel to hang down the centre of his body in a mercilessly thin ribbon of cloth.  If you think about the mechanics of this, you will come to realise very quickly that this is a highly risky method of changing.

First of all, as humans we have a natural, instinctive urge to put our heads up continually to look for danger, like any animal. This is the first cause of peril for the Chinner.  One unthinking movement of the head, and down goes that towel revealing all!

The other peril waiting to display the Chinner’s particles in all their glory is a meteorological one.  A sudden gust of side wind can whip the bottom of the towel upwards just at the Chinner’s most naked moment, in extreme cases depositing the towel in an over-the-shoulder look, quite trendy if it were not for the nakedness beneath.

The Pretender

Now we come to the “coolest” of beach changers.  The Pretender is often a man, and will usually be a rough-and-ready, down-to-earth young adult, perhaps a member of the armed forces – or at the other end of the scale, and older, hippy-ish type.

Both of these very different groups of people have something in common when it comes to changing on the beach – basically, they just don’t care.  It’s almost as if they are “pretending”, as they change, that they are in their bedrooms at home – which of course gives the Pretender his name.

“everything is on show”

Here is what happens:  The Pretender puts down his towel, takes off his footwear, then shirt or tee shirt, then shorts or trousers, then simply whips off the underwear.  Momentarily, everything is on show for anyone to see, but because the Pretender does not have to wrestle with a towel, he can concentrate fully on the matter in hand and as a result, in no time the swimwear in position, leaving any onlookers wondering if they really did just see “that” or whether it was all wishful thinking!

Of course, there is a risk to the Pretender’s strategy.  If he uses this method on some beaches in some countries, he could find himself on an unplanned excursion to the local police station.  This is very unlikely, however, because the beauty of the Pretender’s way of doing things is that it’s a quick-change method.  By the time someone thinks of complaining, the evidence has been quite literally covered up!

I hope you enjoyed reading these Suntrap Holidays holiday truths about “beach changers”.  Please come back often because there will be more..