By: Sam Thor
With public schools coming to a close for the summer, students are taking advantage of the beautiful weather by piling in droves to the shore. As a result of this, millions of Instagram posts have already been posted and captioned with something along the lines of“Life’s a beach!” with a possible addition of “and I’m just playing in the sand xD”. This year however, citizens of Uniondale, New York, decided it was time to take a stand.
Last Monday, dozens of protesters from various age groups, though all over 14 years old, surrounded the Lawrence Road Middle School to protest the many children who use this extremely annoying phrase. This was, of course, not without warrant. “Life’s a beach”, a pun that has been known to not be creative for generations, had been posted hundreds of times from the student population of Lawrence Road in just the past two weeks alone.
“Yeah, I used to say stuff like that in middle school,” Hofstra student and rabid “protester,” Annabelle Heller, admitted. “But I’ve grown as a person. I’ve learned. These stupid, ungrateful 8th graders refuse to change with the times. They have to learn, one way or another.” When asked if this was a literal threat towards children, Heller claimed she had to go study for a final, even though the Hofstra Spring semester had already ended. She could not be reached for further comment, on account of her sprinting away.
The violent, if somewhat reasonable comments didn't end there though.
“If I see or hear about ‘Life’ ‘being’ a ‘beach’ one more time, I’m going to beat the fuck out of a child,” one concerned town member, Joseph Anderson was quoted as shouting at least a couple of times. Anderson, a father of four in his own right, was seen later in the week holding a bullhorn and a sign that read ‘Fuck Off, Kids!” By Wednesday, the protests had turned violent.
At first, only garbage and small rocks were being thrown at the few Summer school students attending in the morning. However, as more and more students from the intramural soccer team and summer swim lesson program frantically tried to escape the school, the projectiles simply grew more dangerous. Bricks were tossed through windows. A car was driven into the side entrance of the school, and continued down the hallway until it drove into a stairwell, and crashed at the bottom. Soon after, one unidentified protester brought a literal catapult, with which the others began launching sandbags at the defenseless students. One protester, Geraldine Phillips, screamed “Instagram this, bitch!” before releasing a projectile sandbag at a student. The student, a young girl who authorities believe was originally around 4’5”, claimed she didn’t even have an Instagram before the sandbag collided with her.
The police, despite more-or-less seeing where everyone was coming from, had to disperse the scene for the safety of the kids. Claiming that it was a case of ignorance of the law in the part of the children who somehow didn’t understand how infuriating they were to everyone online, police on the scene cited orders of dispersion from the top of the department; some citizens have already announced plans plan to fight this law in court, as they should.
Needless to say, there haven’t been anymore “Life’s a Beach” posts since the event, and there probably won’t be anymore for the entirety of the summer. Or else.