my wife, my brother, and i are 7 years old

Memorial Day Weekend annually compels an obscene number of Americans to celebrate those who have fought and died as members of the US armed services by running their pasty bodies across the beach and jumping into a recently-thawed ocean. So it was that Andi, Little Brother to the Stars Zack Moser, and I joined their numbers.

Sunday afternoon, the three of us traveled to Emerald Isle. After many bouts with being too wussy to jump into the freezing water, Zack and I manned up in time to realize there was no current, there were no waves, and we were basically sitting in a salty, frigid swimming pool. No fun.

So we joined Andi for a stroll on the beach. As we took our stroll, we came across a jellyfish that had been washed ashore. There was some debate as to whether or not this was actually a jellyfish, and then whether or not it was dead. In order to satisfy our curiosities on both counts, we immediately sought out things to poke and prod the subject of our inquisitiveness.

On the way up, we also found what appeared to be a dried up puffer fish. Once proper sticks were found, this dead fish would be test case for our poking sticks. All of them snapped upon prodding, except for Zack's, which seemed to be and old wooden tent stake(if the jellyfish had been a vampire, no problems).

A return to our jellyfish friend allowed us to poke, peak around underneath its mesoglea, and eventually flip it back into the ocean on the off chance that it's lack of response to our intrusive stick-maneuvering didn't mean it was dead. At least we were able to agree that it was, in fact a jellyfish.

This conclusion was also come to by a small girl who walked by it and immediately proclaimed "JELLYFISH!!!" We should have shown her the puffer fish-looking guy. I'll bet she could have identified that one quicker than we did, too.