Hammerheading Myself

Nobody's Opinion: It's one of those lonely nights. I have lots of "subjects" running through my head, but, I'm tired of the whole mess. It happens when you get older. The LAST thing I want to talk about is Obama, and Clinton and Nancy and their big party on Miami Beach, and how Clinton is going around all the universities getting the kids to pledge to "serve" his Clinton cause. His...globalization of a world of engineered zombies.

Sometimes you just have to get off that wheel and notice the rest of life...for instance this shark. Is God strange or what? How does evolution explain these poor creatures heads? How does it SEE what it's eating? Did whales use their noses as seat cushions for two million years?

Anyway, this shark reminds me of my childhood, because when I was around five and six, I spent many a weekend watching the men fish for hammerheads off the end of the Naples Pier, in Naples, FL. They would throw great chunks of raw meat in the water...and they even put a few old cars down there...so that the sharks would feel right at home.

When you're five, and you look at one of these things...flapping around your feet for its last breath of life, you wonder why god would do such a thing to a creature? But then again, look what he did to jellyfish. Hammerheads are very scary when you're five, flapping around on the pier...everyone trying not to get near them.

Yes, I'm feeling lonely. I miss my home town.

I just got off the phone with my son. He's had just gotten back from a vacation in Naples, (FL), the town that I grew up in. He spent half the time in his hotel room due to some really killer deathly flu. It was good to hear that he was okay, because he had called me a few nights ago from the emergency room, somewhere off of Marco island. They had managed to get some fluids down him and THANK GOD he had the sense to go. Like millions of self-employed young people, who work for companies that don't offer insurance, sometimes they wait till they are on their deathbed before they get help...due to the expense.

He is worried about the huge bill he will be getting. We all know, Obama is not going to be there to "help" him out.

I'm just glad, he's alive. If you have children then you know how it is when your child (even if that child is an adult) calls you from some emergency room and they are thousands of miles away. Hell...I feel like I just escaped a shark. Life is just too precarious to ponder..you know what I mean?

Anyway, just the thought of the town, brought back so many memories. It happens when you are older...have you noticed? The older you are, you can remember your childhood like it was yesterday, but what you did last week is sometime almost always a mystery.

I really remember, the hammerhead sharks off the great Naples Pier. I included this picture of one caught in Australia...the ones in Naples were just medium size.

I also remember the day while my dad was fishing off the pier, and I was bored, and he gave me a pocket knife, and a bucket, and told me to go on and cut out the eyeballs of all the fish on the beach ...so I did. It was red tide, and I collected about four hundred eyeballs. I was five.

All I can say is my father believed in letting kids have fun. He probably laughed at me the whole time, because I was really proud of my obvious future as a great surgeon. I thought operating on human brains would be great fun! I would grow up to be a very famous doctor, and operate on human brains. Yes! Right dad?

My dad...agreed. (Of course he agreed! As long as I rode in the back of the station wagon.)

There was another time, that my father's best friend...a crazy Englishmen named Clarence...took a bet that he would jump off the end of the pier and swim to shore, (it's a good mile swim into the shore) and so he did...and good thing he did not hear the crowd on the pier yelling...

"DAVIS! CLARENCE! MY GOD... A SHARK IS FOLLOWING YOU!!!!

And sure enough, we watched a nice big fin....follow Clarence, who was swimming at a nice lazy pace...all the way back to shore. Clarence never saw him, and God is good.

There was not one person on that pier who could even believe that the shark, never took even one little bite out of Clarence. As a kid, I figured that Clarence was just too jolly of a guy, and God wanted to keep him around. After that, sharks didn't scare me anymore...until JAWS.

And that's a whole other blog.

The last time my son was in Naples,--- he was only one year old. We got into the hotel really late (my first husband, me, and my son) and even though we were dead tired, I took him to down to the ocean. It was dark, and he really couldn't see much. He doesn't remember it...but I do. It overwhelmed him. I remember his face as he peered out into the darkness. It was priceless. It's etched forever in my mommy's priceless moments brain memory banks.

"Did you get to see the pier? Do you remember being there when you were one?" I asked tonight?

"No...but I bought you a tee-shirt mom, with Naples on it."

My heart soared.

So, why am I lonely? My son is alive...and he just witnessed, as an adult, what I have been telling him about...the beauty of the ocean, the ambiance of a town, still with its small-town character intact.

But tonight, I feel a shark on my heels. Life sometimes attacks you like a shark, and like the ocean, and the universe, and the mystery of why hammerheads are just so darn funny looking...later in life you know you can't do all you want to do...and it's an empty feeling.

And I know what's wrong. I'm actually afraid that I will never get to walk on that pier with my son before I die...to share with him the warm feel of the salt air, the stars, and the twinkle of the lights on the water. I'm more afraid of not experiencing that in my lifetime than any hammerhead shark.

So...I'm not going to give up on THAT dream...I will put it in my twinkle jar, along with the eyeballs, and hammerheads.

Now, don't you wonder, as I do...if that guy pulled in that shark all by himself?

And could his name...be...just maybe...Clarence?