Birthday Boy

“Hey, could you bring down some rope from the house so we can cordon off our section of the beach to stop the crowds from pouring in?”  I said this to Robby’s friend Gabe.  It was my attempt to make fun of myself before my sons and their buddies could start doing it for me.  We were

an hour-and-a-half into the Sunday, 2 o’clock birthday party, and after all my e-mails, texts, Facebook messages, and flyers, handed out at both Jack’s Coffee as well as on the beach;

after the colorful signage I’d created on my surfboard; after the party favors I’d painstakingly accumulated and neatly laid out for the doggy guests; after the coolers of beer and wine I’d lugged down

to the beach . . . we had all of 11 people.  And 10 of them were houseguests!  Oh, and we had one dog:  Kemba.

Eventually, all the boys gave up and left on their 4:19 train back to Manhattan . . . and only then, fashionably late, did the guests starting

arriving in droves.  (Well, maybe not droves): Beach friends Greg and Lauren, with Bandit; Joe and Andee, with granddog Monty; neighbors Danny and Maureen, keeping their attendance

record a perfect 3-for-3 at Kemba’s Beach Bash Birthdays, and Scott and Jessie, with 13-month-

old Baby Fisher, who got bowled over not once but twice by Kemba, picked himself up, dusted the sand off his bare heinie, and came right back for

more.

Highlights for the K-Dawg?  Unquestionably the pink, spiky ball from Arline (a Teaneck High

School buddy who drove over from Sag Harbor — the lone guest my sons actually witnessed) that Kemba fetched maybe 750 times during the party and is still obsessed with a full day later;

and the box of Milk-Bone dog biscuits, courtesy of Joe and Andee, that Kemba busted into and feasted on prematurely, Ricky-the-Beagle-style.

LOOK FOR A NEW BEAGLE MAN POST EVERY THURSDAY. OR PRETTY CLOSE TO THURSDAY. COULD BE WEDNESDAY. OR FRIDAY. LET’S NOT GET TOO OBSESSIVE HERE . . . 🙂  OH, AND BTW, YOU CAN ALSO FOLLOW ME ON FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM.