So, the other day, I was just kind of spacing out, you know, letting my mind wander, and this old riddle popped into my head from somewhere: what did the beach say when the tide came in? I remember hearing it ages ago, but for the life of me, I couldn’t recall the answer immediately. It’s funny how your brain just decides to forget some things and then randomly brings them back up.
My first instinct, like with most riddles, was to overthink it. I started going down all these weird paths. Did the beach say “Ouch, you’re heavy!” because of the water pressure? Or maybe “Brrr, you’re cold!”? Nah, too literal, too clunky. Riddles are usually about wordplay, right? So I tried to think of words related to the beach or the tide that sound like other common phrases.
I mentally listed things associated with the beach:
- Sand
- Shells
- Waves
- Water
- Shore
And things associated with the tide coming in:
- Getting wet
- Rising water
- Covering things
None of those were sparking much. I thought about “shore” – “I’m ‘shore’ glad to see you!” Too weak. “Water” you doing? Still not quite right. I chewed on it for a bit. It’s like when you have a word on the tip of your tongue. Super frustrating. I even considered if the beach would be annoyed, like, “Oh great, here comes the tide again to mess up my perfect sandy look.” But that didn’t feel like a classic riddle punchline.
Then, I shifted my thinking a bit. What does the tide do? It comes in, and it goes out. When it comes in, it’s arriving. And the beach is there, seeing it arrive. Seeing… sea-ing… sea!
The Penny Drops
And then it just clicked. It was so obvious once I got there. The beach says: “Long time no sea!”
Get it? “Long time no see!” It’s a classic pun. I actually let out a little groan when I remembered it because it’s so simple and a bit cheesy, but that’s what makes it a good old-fashioned riddle. I felt a bit silly for not getting it straight away, but also that little satisfying feeling when you finally solve something, even if it’s trivial.
It actually got me thinking about that phrase, “long time no see.” It’s something we say so casually, but it really does capture a specific feeling. It made me remember running into an old friend I hadn’t seen since school, maybe ten years had passed. We just bumped into each other at a supermarket. And yeah, after the initial shock, “long time no see” was one of the first things we said. It was weird, because in some ways it felt like no time had passed, but in other ways, we were completely different people. We stood there for nearly an hour, catching up, right in the middle of the frozen food aisle. People were trying to get past us with their carts, and we were just oblivious. Life, like the tide, had pulled us in different directions, and then, just for a moment, it brought us back together on the same ‘shore’.
So yeah, that little riddle took me on a bit of a mental journey. From trying to be overly clever, to frustration, to that ‘aha!’ moment, and then down a little memory lane. Funny how simple things can do that. It’s a good reminder that sometimes the most straightforward answer, the punny one, is the right one.
