Summer in Summerside

I have often commented on how this island is perhaps one of the best places in all of my travels to spend a summer. But allow for the fact that it is overcast most of the time. Each really bright warm day is a jewel from the sun gods. Often the wind shifts bringing shockingly cool air from some place still icy or of icy seas. My little beach at Green's shore, the "Bay walk' as we call it here is really a eel grass choked tidal flat.

The sand is coarse and brown and the sea smells 0f organic decay. I love it as it is as it should be, but many a passerby comments upon the weeds and the "smell". I can hear them as the walk by on the boardwalk while I am lounging hour after hour on the coarse red-brown sand.

They trot by with dogs and kids, some chattering in French, some on phones, some speaking too loudly about a local affair or their world travels. Please. I learn more while on the beach than I do at the wing or legion on Saturday night. My friend Mary doesn't like it when I socialize, especially with female friends. She hates it when I dance facing the seated folks. I think she hates my tan, and she sure dislikes my computer. I am also advised that my life is an abject failure and my misery is my punishment from God for my misdeeds and crimes against humanity, Rhonda, and Shel. I consider this as I soak up the sun and write here by the sea.

Somehow my punishment seems to be what all the moneyed folk walking on bay walk and touring the island for a few days long for. Early retirement. affordable housing. Cable TV. I guess I have missed the point somewhere but I am trying to figure out what everyone is so afraid of and what they are working so hard to accomplish.

I have done all of that. College. Started a business, made millions. Tahiti. My airplane, fleet of cars, my Mercedes, mansion and servants, Shel among them. Now I wait on the beach. All of the material props removed I am still on vacation. Those who visit here have to leave to return to whatever reality someone told them was the proper way to comport themselves. Pay your bills. Follow all the rules. Act like a sycophant-yes sir or ma mm. Don't question authority. Be afraid , yes awfully and horribly afraid.

For tomorrow you may be broke. Don't take a risk. You may lose your home, wife, car, airplane, nanny, or mistress. OOH Noooo! Been there and done that. Still on the beach. Clothes clean, hair cut. And the ladies still like me.

The big loss is the fact of my own bewilderment. Everyone is taking it all way too seriously, and usually about matters of little or no importance of issues over which one has little or no control. They are the same thing.

My quandary is that for most of my time in life it seems that someone wants to steal my joy. I know that misery loves a good friend, but what is it about me that drives the unhappy masses insane? Maybe I just attract the wrong people. At my first job, I was hated as a rebel, but was one of the most cited and admired professionals in my organization. Later, in business I made millions making it seem easy. Then I was ridiculed for taking too many vacations. Hell, that is why I started my own company in the first place!

Then when I lost all that because wife one thought she could steal and somehow operate my "easy" business I married a young blond and moved to the desert southwest. Here I started another small business and worked on my hobbies, fishing, shooting, and the art of relaxation.

Being too happy at that, wife two decides too get what she can and seek paradise at my expense after still angry wife one has me handcuffed for failure to keep her in the mansion, which she of course lost and screwed up after she ruined the business that she desired to run so badly. Must be my fault.

Blond wife decides that she has to make me angry so Ill go away so she sleeps around and ruins my truck. Of course I decide to stay in paradise to wait on her return, which never really occurs unless she is homeless and without a boyfriend at the moment, or some other payor.

Sure I should be all twisted up about this. But I am still on vacation as I sit on the beach and watch the ants dart about their serious purposes. Life is great. I sincerely thank all of my friends and lovers who have pointed out how awful my life is and what an evil bum I am and always shall be.

Maybe Ill move to Hawaii when I get bored again.

Next entry, "The Golden Casket Syndrome".