Day Two of beach vacation. It’s sunny in Florida, I’m sitting on the beach with a blind 12-year-old girl. We have sand in all major orifices including the crevices between our teeth.

The gang’s all here. My wife is reading a book. Becca, my blind goddaughter, is eating sand.

“Well, I just wanted to know how it tasted,” Becca pointed out.

Becca is eating sand, of course, because she is from a North Alabama region called Sand Mountain, and they do different things on Sand Mountain.

This is not Becca’s first time at the beach, but it’s her first time being in Florida with actual Floridians.

My wife and I grew up on the Gulf Coast and thought it would be fun to take our goddaughter with us on a beach trip so we could introduce her to some uniquely Floridian pastimes. Such as, standstill traffic, highway construction, and DR Horton subdivisions.

So far the trip has been great. Yesterday, Becca had boiled peanuts. There was a learning curve. It wasn’t easy teaching a blind child to eat boiled peanuts, but we eventually got there.

I taught her how to open the peanuts, how to suck the Cajun-spicy juice, and most importantly, how to wipe her messy hands on the seat of her shorts so that she had little orange Cajun handprints on her rear.

“Are you sure this is how I should wipe my hands?” she asked. “It doesn’t seem very neat.”

“You’re fine,” I insisted like any guy would.

Then we pulled over to eat seafood. We stopped at a genuine Florida fish house called Boon Docks in Panama City Beach. It was the kind of authentic place with tin roofs and seagulls soliciting handouts. There was a long wait.

When we arrived, the hostess pulled me aside and said, “Did you know there are orange handprints on the seat of this little girl’s pants?”

Becca was thrilled.

Our supper was good. And it turned out to be a meal of many firsts for Becca. She ate grouper for the first time. She ate shrimp. She ate oysters—my cup runneth over.

“How do you like the oysters?” I asked.

“Mmmmmgrpplwhmmmggghh,” she replied with a mouthful.

“Huh?” I said.

“Mmmmmgrpplwhmmmggghh!”

Then she gave me a thumbs up and ate six more oysters that were all approximately the same size as Danny Devito.

After supper, we arrived at the rental condo and it was already dark. The condo was very nice, and we were staying on the eleventh floor. I was surprised we were staying at such a fancy place and asked my wife how she managed it.

“I got a great discount,” my wife explained. “Because the elevator is broken.”

We schlepped our luggage up endless flights of steps. Becca accompanied us on each back-and-forth luggage run, holding our shirt tails as we marched up and down the stairwell carrying full Coleman coolers.

“I have to pee,” said Becca.

After our rental condo was organized, after children had evacuated their bladdera, and after all our discs were herniated, we went down to the beach. It was night by then. The stars were out. The sound of the surf was deafening.

Becca turned her face toward the breeze and took it all in. Her little hand squeezed mine.

“Does this mean I’m a Floridian now, like you and Jamie?”

“You’re more than just a Floridian,” said my wife. “You’re our goddaughter.”