Scope these Super 80s Beach Scopes!

Picture it. Ocean City, Maryland. 1988.

I am at the beach with my family—mom, dad and older sister—our cheap, aluminum beach chairs pitched somewhere between 99th and 102nd streets. I am seven years old and I am surrounded by throngs of beach goers and sunbathers on this perfect sunny day, and all I want to do is build sandcastles and splash in the waves and be left the fuck alone. I want to feel the sand between my toes as I roam the beach like a little explorer, neon-pink plastic shovel And bucket in hand, looking for adventure (and the occasional neat-looking seashell), straying further from our ugly striped umbrella (with fringe!), which, incidentally, is also my visual landmark in case I get lost.

In the far distance I can see the huge ferris wheel at the end of the boardwalk—well, maybe not so huge from where I stand, but it’s a comforting and familiar sight; something to orient myself to as I sweep my eyes across the vast, sparkling sea. Behind me looms the shadow of a high-rise condominium, our rented unit on the 9th floor visible but indistinguishable from the dozens of others just like it. It was a good deal, though, because my Dad knew a guy who knew another guy, so we got it for cheap, our little tackily-decorated slice of paradise. And it was ocean-front! That’s a big deal for a place like Ocean City, a thin stretch of beach located on a peninsula that’s less than a mile wide and 10 miles long and gets hundreds of thousands of visitors per day.

“You girls are lucky,” my dad would often say to us. “Most people have to stay bayside,” referring to the non-oceanfront rentals on the other side of Ocean Highway, as if it was something to be ashamed of. I chose to believe our oceanfront supremacy made us special. At the very least, we never had to deal with schlepping all our beach stuff across the busy highway, cheap flip-flops melting into the burning asphalt.

So there I am just chillin’ with my sand toys, feeling that cool ocean breeze along with my first real taste of freedom, when suddenly I spot him—the Scopes Guy. My heart sinks.

Enter: The Scopes Guy

The Scopes Guy, as every Ocean City vacationer knows, is this mythical creature (usually with chiseled abs) who roams the sand dunes in full photography gear crying “SCOPES! SCOPES! GET YOUR SCOPES!”. His only mission in life is to find willing subjects to pose for “scope photos,” which are small plastic telescopes that contain tiny photos of you and your family posing awkwardly on the beach in your swim trunks and ill-fitting bikinis…cuz by the time you actually spotted the Scopes Guy you were already waterlogged with a crotch full of sand. You expect me, an anti-social seven year old, to pose for beach photos? With my hair looking like a wet clump of seaweed? Ridiculous.

Sure enough, I look back towards our umbrella to see my mom’s hand waving frantically in the air, like she’s hailing a goddamn cab. She locks eyes with The Scopes Guy and I know at that point it’s all over for me—goodbye sandcastles, goodbye freedom. For the next hour I know I’m going to be subjected to pose after stupid pose as my mom endeavors to memorialize our beach trip into a collection of what are basically colorful plastic keychains.

For my mom, though, it is showtime and she relishes every second of it. She is in her element, directing The Scopes Guy like she’s Coppola directing The Godfather, throwing out suggestions for poses, backdrops and compositions.

“Get one with the ocean in the background!”

”Now get one over there by the big rocks!”

“Get one of me and my husband looking into each other’s eyes!”

”Get one of me and the girls!”

”Now get some of each of the girls, individually!”

….as if The Scopes Guy hasn’t taken hundreds if not thousands of photos exactly like what she’s describing. But he’s a good sport about it, charming and polite, with a dazzling smile—cause at the end of the day he knows he’s making commission on the exorbitantly-priced photo package my mom will inevitably commit to buying.

Once the torture—I mean photo session—is over, our reward is a hot, miserable car ride down Ocean Highway to “the photo place,” where the suckers go to pick up and pay for their scopes. And of course we always had to get there early to beat the crowds, else we’d end up standing in a line that wrapped around the building so that indecisive Karen types could inspect each individual scope, nitpicking over the exact photos they were willing to pay for.

This was my personal hell, not only because even as a dumb kid I could just FEEL that this whole scopes thing was a total ripoff, but also because I knew every single photo of me was going to look stupid and I’d hate them. Even as a child I was acutely aware of how much of an ugly duckling I was, especially compared to my mother who was slim and beautiful and worked out most nights at the athletic club. I’m not kidding when I say she was in her element. My mom LIVED for these scope photos, and now, looking back on it as a grown woman, I know it’s because she knew she’d probably never look as hot and amazing as she did in those pictures. (Also the Scopes Guy was usually pretty hot, too, which I’m sure was part of the appeal.)