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Copyrights reserved by the author. If you are in doubt, please click on 'Copyrights' and read the details. The perils of a peaceful stroll along the beach by J. G. Fabiano As bad as the weather was during August, the month of September ushered in some of the finest and freshest beach days I could ever remember. The days were warm and the nights were cool, allowing everyone to get a great night’s sleep with the realization that summer never ended because the weather just got better. Every weekend since Labor Day I have made it a commitment to take a walk down Long Sands Beach. I never made it down into the sand or near the water but I did enjoy some wonderful walks on the sidewalk that looks out into the ocean. The only problem was that everyone who missed his or her time in the sun because of the bad August weather had the same idea. The parking spaces were filled as they should have been filled during the summer months, and the sidewalk was never as empty as it had been in past during the early days of autumn. This, of course, made the competition for the sidewalk as tough as it was during the summer months. The walk from where the sidewalk begins, opposite the trailer park, was easy to navigate. There were few people coming at me so I thought I had the competition pretty well licked. However, right after I passed the Lobster Cover Restaurant the same people I competed with for sidewalk control during the summer months were still there, when they should have been home preparing for winter. I could never understand why people had to walk in threes until I noticed that the middle person of the trio always walked a bit ahead of the other two, making a kind of spearhead to eliminate anyone who attempted to walk through them. During the summer months, because I wanted to make the visitors to our community as welcome as possible, I would step off the sidewalk and go around them by walking on the road. This usually worked, with the exception of a few people in cars, on the side of the road, opening their doors at the precise moment I decided to pass. Most of the time I would just get hit in the stomach and lose a little breath, or my beach chair would catch on their side mirror and spin me into the person getting out of the car. This was not a bad thing if the person opening the door was young, pretty and female but for the most part they were overweight middle-aged men with bad breath and worse body odor. On one occasion, as I was passing an SUV the size of a ten-wheeler, the door swung opened and knocked me into the middle of Long Sands Road. As I staggered into the passing traffic I was comforted only by the thought that my wife would finally get to enjoy the insurance money she has invested in me over the years. I landed on my butt in the middle of the road with my beach chair on top of me as though this was where I expected to take up residence for the day. At the same time I heard the screeching of tires and waited for some all terrain vehicle to make a permanent crease in my head but when I looked up I saw that the car in front of me was a bright yellow Volkswagen beetle. After I heard the car stop it actually beeped at me. At first I laughed because the sound of the horn was similar to that of a gull who just ate its last saltine cracker. The driver’s side door then opened and out of the little VW came one of the largest men I have ever seen in my life. He had no hair, a huge head, and his body consisted of a giant stomach supported by two small feet. For a second I sat there hoping he wasn’t the famed wrestler, Haystack Calhoun, about to demonstrate his infamous jump of death. All he did was yell at me in a voice that made the peep of the horn sound rugged. Muttering under my breath about the joys of the tourist season I struggled back to my feet, grabbed my chair and headed back to the sidewalk. Meanwhile, the man in the monster SUV, who was responsible for my near-death experience, was laughing so hard his face had assumed the color of a ripe tomato. As I squeezed past his truck it was unfortunate that my battered old beach chair raked along his shiny new bumper with a shriek like an angry seagull. It did nothing to hurt the bumper or my chair but the last I saw of tomato face he was down on his knees examining the bumper of his SUV as if it was a fine piece of china. Back on the sidewalk I negotiated my way around a new phalanx of power-walkers to continue my quest for relaxation only to be confronted by that most dreaded of sights; the jock mom pushing a double-wide baby carriage the size of a snowplow. I recognized the mom as someone who had pushed me onto the road before. There is no defense against this type of attack. Once before I had tried to squeeze past the carriage only to have the child inside scream at me as though I was a giant pterodactyl swooping down to have it for dinner. I remember the child consisted almost entirely of an open mouth, which it then used to expel an unbelievable stream of saliva over me, the memory of which could only be erased by multiple hot showers. Not wanting to be slimed again I opted to step out into the road and allow the human battering-ram to pass unimpeded scattering all before her. When I had regained the sidewalk I was soon confronted by another type of obstruction that I only associated with the summer months; a family of about one hundred that had decided to stack all their worldly possessions on the sidewalk by their vehicle. Pausing in front of the mountain of beach chairs, toys, flotation devices, coolers, strollers, umbrellas, blankets, clothing, food, Red Cross supplies, and even some used refrigeration units, I actually contemplated making the climb. Then I remembered how many people had lost their lives on Mount Everest and once again opted to go around the obstruction and take my chances with the traffic. Then, God must have seen my struggles and seen fit to bestow on me my reward. Looking ahead, for the remaining length of the beach, I saw only empty sidewalk. A sight I am not used to seeing, except in the middle of January when only the foolhardy venture down to the beach. I thought it was too good to be true and actually stopped in my tracks to savor it. It was too good to be true. As I squinted down the walk, far in the distance, I saw somebody coming towards me. Another sidewalk nemesis; the jogger with his dog. By this time I’d had it with always giving in to people who acted like I had no right to share the sidewalk with them. I stuck to my course as we closed on each other. He was not deviating from his stride and I was damned if I was going to step aside for him. So what if we smashed into each other, I thought. I had weight on my side and I’ve survived many dog bites before. I braced myself as we came within seconds of impact, and then I noticed the jogger not only had a dog with him, he also had a white cane! With collision imminent I dived onto the nearest parked car, which just happened to be a yellow Volkswagen. As the blind jogger ran safely past, the big bald fat man with the squeaky voice jumped out of the Volkswagen, pointed his finger at me and yelled: "You are a menace to everybody on the road."As I limped back home I found myself hoping that maybe this January would bring a thaw that would give us some good beach-walking weather.
The End
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