Not sure what this (or that ^) has to do with anything, but I was sitting on the rocks out near Brenton Point recently — last Wednesday, I think — doing nothing in particular: just looking around, watching stuff, checking out some drowned crabs in a post-hurricane tide pool, things like that.
Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye (the right one), I noticed some figures in motion. It was a group of kids climbing around on that high outcropping of rock alongside Ocean Drive just past Castle Hill known as 12 O'Clock High. These kids weren't just climbing; they were jumping. Yes, 12 O'Clock High is a popular jumping spot despite being a DANGEROUS jumping spot.
Seriously, isn't that where someone drowned earlier this summer?? I believe it is. How awful. Truly awful. Beyond-words awful.
Yet here were these kids. Jumping. It wasn't 12 o'clock — it was more like 3 o'clock — though the rocks were certainly high. But, wait, if the rocks were high, doesn't that mean the tide was low, i.e., isn't that precisely when one should NOT be jumping off the rocks at 12 O'Clock High, or anywhere else for that matter??
Then I remembered my smart phone (I finally got one), on which I googled "tides in Newport, RI" for that particular date — who knows why we google what we google? — and discovered that it was, as I'd feared, dead low tide at precisely 3: 13 p.m last Wednesday, 9/14. Not that the information made me feel any better. Not that I was really going to do anything with it or about it, though perhaps I should have. I just kept watching. Tried to sit back and relax while watching kids jump off into treacherous waters ... which they managed to do without mishap.
These kids.
This time.
Then, of course, there's the spectacle (both thrilling and fear-knot-worthy) of kids' jumping off/out into the big wide world ...
