Why Do People Dig Holes On The Beach?

Doofus.

I’m being dead serious here.

I spent every summer and most long holiday weekends on the Outer Banks for around 20-years thanks to an ex-wife’s family who owned a cottage there, and it happened every week. A new family will move into one of the rentals, dad and the kids would head to the beach, and the first thing he’d do is start digging a hole.

I have several comments regarding this phenomenon, and shall list them thusly:

• WHY? Because it’s easy to dig in the sand? I’m befuddled. I can see building sandcastles and stuff, but digging a hole? I ask you, what is the point?
• Often the idiot hole-diggers don’t fill them back in. Newsflash: People walk on the beach at night. They also jog. They can’t see the hole you dug. They could fall in. Nobody wants a snapped tibia on the second day of vacation.
• Most importantly, it’s dangerous. Years ago a guy dug a really deep hole down in Nag’s Head and then he put his beach chair in it and sat down. Why, you ask? Only he knew, and he took the answer to his grave, which happened to be the hole he’d just dug. This is because the hole collapsed on him and killed him. I remember it took them 45-minutes to dig him out as his family watched in horror. Helluva vacation killer, right there. Pun intended. But seriously, frantically digging through soft sand that keeps filling back in as you try and find little Niles would just be horrific.

Fun Fact: Did you know that more people are killed or injured every year from a sand hole collapsing than a shark attack? It’s true.

The general rule is to never dig a hole deeper than the knees of the smallest person on your group. And if you do, for the love of God fill it back in.

Then again, maybe that’s sort of nature’s way of thinning the herd.

Carry on, but first check out these examples of what can happen: