Dad organized his beach badge collection this weekend. 

He’s been saving badges since my parents bought the shore house about sixty years ago. Recently he decided he has to finish the project.

For regular readers you understand the intensity and urgency my father brings to such tasks.

The badges were already sorted by decade. He had used former peanut butter jars and salsa containers to hold them.

There was a jar for badges that spanned the 1960s-1989s; another for the years in the 1990s; one for the 2000s; one for the 2010s and 2020s. There was a container for metal badges from the 1970s.

What Dad wanted now was a breakdown by year and category i.e. some indication if it was male or female, plastic or metal, adult or senior.

If you are wondering why this level of detail would be needed you are barking up the wrong tree. 

It’s like the famous question about why anyone climbs Mount Everest. 

We have the badges. They can be counted, so they should be counted.

Dad is an engineer and part of that DNA means keeping things organized. 

Only once you have items in their place can you decide what comes next.

As it turned out, the effort yielded some pretty interesting sociological, cultural and historical insights.

The first was that until 1990 there were male and female badges. After that the gender distinction was eliminated.

The second was that “junior” badges were introduced at some point, perhaps as a way to charge younger people who were previously free.

Third, in 2023 the city adopted “Veterans badges,” no doubt as a patriotic gesture. Dad enthusiastically showed his discharge papers to qualify.

Fourth, we found a set of badges that had never been used, never even taken out of the packaging. 

At first it was puzzling. Looking closer we realized that they were from 2020, the year Covid closed the beaches. How long ago that now seems. Almost like it never happened.

Only once we finished did Dad explain that he wanted to see if he had enough to frame them or maybe make ornaments.

We have every year since 1962 except 1965, 1968 and 1980. 

If anyone has those vintages, let me know.

Dad wants to finish the project.