As Dr. Arnold Shortman exited Riverside Highway towards the sleepy shore town of Spencer Beach, all the memories came flooding out like water from a broken pipe. While vacationing as children over summer break, he and Helga Pataki wound up not only participating in a sandcastle contest but winning the grand prize; a walk-on role on the later of the two's favorite TV series Babewatch filmed right there on the town's beach.
Of course, that was just the simplified version of their brush with small screen fame.
Arnold had initially hoped to enter the sand castle contest alongside some local girl with whom he fell head over heels for while on his trip only to find out through Helga (who had spent the week sabotaging any quality time the two of them shared) that said local girl was in actuality a duplicitous and fame-hungry snake who saw Arnold as a means to jumpstart her acting career.
While turning onto Ocean Avenue, it hit Arnold like a ton of bricks just how blessed he and his wife Helga were in terms of life stories that being on a hit television series was something they could nonchalantly say happened to them. For a child psychologist, he (and her) had been privileged to embark on many more adventures, some of which could, in all fairness, dwarf being on Babewatch. Yet while neither sought to further cash in on their fifteen minutes of fame as child actors, it wasn't like Arnold and Helga lived in a bubble; their episode became an instant favorite among many die-hard Babewatch fans (owing to both the chemistry they shared on screen as well as the latter of the two's brashness) and as such, they would receive and turn down the occasional call/e-mail from pop-culture conventions looking for C and below list celebs to sign autographs and do meet-and-greets.
But all in all, life went on quietly for the Shortmans and their daughters Eleanor and Cecile. Helga enjoyed modest success as a YA writer and Arnold succeeded his de-facto mother in law Dr. Bliss in helping troubled children cope with the issues they faced.
And it was in that spirit that he had driven an hour and a half away from his office in Hillwood and made this return to Spencer Beach; a fact driven home all the more by the presence of police cruisers and the officers that escorted him into the town's junior high school once he finally reached his destination.