A chilly trip to the beach with one rule: ‘Don’t get wet’

‘You can get your toes wet,’ I said. ‘That’s it.’

BRIAN MCMILLAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

According to a McMillan family legend, my parents brought me and my siblings to the beach on a cold day in Washington state in the 1980s, when I was about 5 years old. While we were there, the story goes, we were given strict orders: “Whatever you do, don’t get wet.”

Some time later, we cold and crying children trudged back to the family van, shivering, dripping, defeated. Over the years, it seemed, that legend came to symbolize to my parents the disobedience of all children everywhere.

I thought about that story last week, when I drove my two young-