A story.
So my Grampa, one of the best humans I’ve known, paradoxically worked at positions most folks consider utterly horrible. He worked for a furrier before deciding the NYPD was definitely not going away during the Depression, worked for the IRS after getting invalided off the police force, worked as a realtor in Florida before it really got big. My Gramma, previously a much less hated teacher, became a fellow realtor.
Gramma glued some of the shells to canvas as art for the place (they were amateur artists, and very little of the art in their home was by someone else; that’s much of why I use their name to sell art); the rest went in a big decorative bowl in the entry hallway.
When Grampa finally passed I offered to return the shells to the beach. I’d already discovered I liked walking the beach at night, as an adult without my folks managing my schedule. It was quiet, warm with a slight breeze.
I had the shells in a big bag, walked up and down the beach throwing shells out onto the beach, some into the shallows (Florida doesn’t get rough surf like we do here), until they were all gone. I hope the next morning some tourists were ridiculously happy at this cool stuff they’d discovered. I’m pretty sure that’s what either of them would’ve done if they’d been there.
That’s pretty much the only reason they were able to get a condo at the beach. Long ago enough that they got a batch of beautiful shells from the beach, way larger and more intact than what washes up after storms, when someone dredged a navigation channel.