A lot of people yearn to be part of something bigger than themselves, something truly glorious, something that can give their life purpose. Some people climb the corporate ladder, others join the military, and some will selflessly dedicate their life to charity. But deep down, all we truly want is to not only see a really, really deep hole at the beach, but to know that we contributed to making such a big, cool hole in the sand.

I was fortunate to be involved in such an endeavour when I was a kid. Complete strangers, very little talking, we knew our job, we got in there and got the job done.

The children, they yearn for the mines

Its because the children yearn for the mines.

LOL, I’m 52 and I’d be all over this.

“What y’all doin’?”

“Making a hole.”

“Why?”

“No reason.”

“Got another shovel?”

I used to live in Louisiana and had a friend with a house on one of the enormous lakes there. I was hanging out there one day when he decided to move a big slab of steel-sided building that had been lying in the water there for years. He wasn’t doing anything productive with it, just wanted it moved 30 or 40 feet to one side, so he hopped into the water with his snorkel-equipped ATV and started fucking with it a little bit. Within ten minutes or so, about 15 of his neighbors had shown up in their snorkel-equipped ATVs (without being called or anything communicative like that) and started “helping”, which amounted to everybody randomly nudging the slab from all sides without budging it even an inch. Eventually they gave up and drank beer.

Women want to know what we want, when it is really this simple, a hole, some shovels, and the boys.

Thus the true meaning behind the phrase boys will be boys

Reminds me of that Irish hole that the news thought was a meteor strike, when it was in fact just made by some lads the day before for the hell of it.

Sometimes guys just wanna dig a random hole. Peak “boys will be boys” right here.

To be clear, the text in the bottom half of this meme is 100% accurate, though rarely, if ever, spoken out loud. When you approached The Hole, you’d briefly exchange glances with the other diggers, they’d nod, silently acknowledging a new ally and, without a word, affirming “you know what to do.”

Growing up in a village, we did this sometimes near a pond. Instead of sand, it was soft clay. It was fun to see it fill up with water when it got deep enough.

This is MY hole!! It’s meant for MEEE

Boys? Don’t dig deeper than you are tall, ok? Sand can fall in on itself. If it’s up to your neck, we dig you out. If it’s over your head, we don’t get to come to the beach again.

Got that, boys? Okay. Grab a spade.

The hole must be dug deeper. DEEPER.

2 weeks later, the hole has stairs carved out of the relief of the wall, children wearing hard hats are calling up to their parents asking for 5 for minutes at the beach.