Pirate Island

            My son loves pirates. He is fascinated by them and believes that they have buried treasure  up and down the entire Long Island coast. There is a beach in Peconic that my family loves to visit.  It sits right on the creek and it is perfect for swimming and kayaking.  Even though it is more accurately a peninsula, my son has decided that the beach on the other side of the creek is an island.  Our first visit there this summer, he insisted on visiting the “island,” which he dubbed Pirate Island, so that he could search for treasure, convinced that pirates had buried it somewhere in the sand.  My mother, not wanting to disappoint him, had taken a few pennies and wrapped them in aluminum foil, torn from our lunches.  My son and I crossed the creek in kayak, carrying a shovel with us, and while my parents distracted him, looking for treasure in one direction, I disappeared the opposite way, dug three holes and deposited the treasure.  Covering each cache with driftwood or dried reeds shaped in the letter X, I set off to find my son and redirect his attention.  Finding the Xs in the sand, he was excited. Uncovering the treasure he was ecstatic.

            Later that same week, my mother stopped into a craft store in search of wooden treasure boxes.  Finding three tiny ones, she purchased them for my son’s next adventure.  When we next headed off to Pirate Island, my dad filled the boxes with pennies and again I buried them while my son searched elsewhere for the telltale Xs that would indicate a pirate’s presence.

            “He’s got to know that you’re the one hiding them,” my dad insisted as my son enthusiastically uncovered the treasure and counted the coins. But if he knew, he showed no indication or disappointment that it wasn’t the work of real pirates.

While my son loves the concept of looking for buried treasure, he is not very good at actually spotting the Xs that have grown bigger over the course of the summer.  Dad usually walks ahead and when he spies the X he stands stiffly, leaning over the mark waiting for my son to see him.  If the treasure is buried too deeply, my son hands off the shovel to someone else. I learned that lesson once after digging too deeply – nearly to the water level - thinking it would somehow enhance the anticipation and excitement.  I was dreadfully mistaken.

            As the summer progressed, we played the game repeatedly and each time my son was thrilled to add several pennies to the jar in which he was saving up to buy some more Legos.  However, on his second to last excursion, he expressed some regret that the pirates were only burying pennies instead of gold doubloons.  So on our last outing, hoping to compensate for not possessing any real doubloons, my father ensured that instead of pennies my son would find dollar bills.  This time my little pirate was delighted with his finds because now he finally had enough money for a trip to the toy store to buy his beloved Legos.