She Did It On Porpoise!

One might think that seeing a porpoise, dolphin, flipper, zoom fish, whatever, even on this island, is a rare event. Ha!  We see a dozen every day.  Plus, I often see one or two babies leaping out of the water by their mother’s side (they look more like fish than porpoises, dolphins, flippers, zoom fish, whatever).  There are some scenes Michelle and I never tire of, however, as per the photo she snapped Saturday on Lemon Bay (left).

The 90-year-old rudder who fell in the store last week and broke his hip and wrist and who somehow managed to drive back home and who thereupon had to remain sitting in his hot car in his hotter garage for the next one, two, three days because he could not open the car door with his broken wrist and who survived by eating a pound cake and who had nothing to drink and who was saved only when a neighbor saw his hand waving feebly from the window and all of which I noted in a recent blog (“Full-Time Mom,” 5.9.13), well . . . that old fellow finally clocked out.  

What can one say?  Many folks at that age are no more capable of caring for themselves than little children.  So befuddled and frail and crazed are they that it is a major mystery how they even find their way to their own restroom each day much less to the grocery store and back each week.  Some don’t need full-time care, just a near, dear and clear mind who will keep an eye out to prevent them from walking into canals, strolling the streets naked at noon or dying by degrees in an oven for three days with zero water. 

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Serial Ponds—The more your blogger investigates the bigger your blogger's curiosity grows for this strange phenomena, this odd attraction, this weird fascination that Florida fossils have for Florida canals.  Latest bizarre twist to this magnetic mystery seems now to be crazy old coots and Florida ponds.  Just the other day up at some miserable swamp clearing, an addled 79-year-old wheel chair-bound double amputee felt compelled to roll up and park beside—what else?—a pond.  I guess the same people who weren’t looking out for the old fellow in the garage above also weren’t looking out for this old fellow either.

Somehow, of course—and God only knows how—the wheelchair “slipped” and the occupant tumbled into the water.  Now, considering that all it takes for hungry gators to come swimming like speed boats is a slight disturbance on the water—Michelle saw three small gators just yesterday busting their butts at a pond in Port Charlotte when someone tossed in a mere stick—it must be counted as a minor modern miracle that two men stumbled upon the scene and rescued the helpless blighter before the gators had a chance to suppa down.

But really?  One might expect a few deaths yearly when old and young alike topple from kayaks into white water rapids, or one might expect a few drownings when others are canoeing or swimming in deep, swift rivers. But here?  The murky, mossy messes here are so still and shallow that it would seem that only the most clumsy and determined idiot could possibly drown in a Florida creek, canal or pond.  But lordy, lordy, lordy, how they do, how they do. 

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Happy Murder’s Day—Apparently, Mother’s Day was a total bust up at Lakeland last week.  Bill Pennnypacker got all boozed up, then decided to vent a bit about his crummy childhood by working over his ma.  After slugging her in the face for a bit, the son pulled out a pistol and shot her in the shoulder, for sport.  Some how mom managed to find her own gat and then opened up herself.  Sonny’s aim was not so hot; mom’s aim was on the spot.  Bill is now 64 for ever.  And as for his 86-year-old mom?  Nancy is now recovering at a local hospital.  Guess blood ain’t so thick after all.

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Death By High Rise—I feel sorry for these poor, desperate mopes whose lives have become such an unbearable burden that they choose to end it.  I have heard that New Hampshire in spring is number one for suicide states since, just when the calendar tells these people that spring and sun have arrived, back comes the cold, gray reality of their existence with more winter weather.  Florida must be number two on that suicide list.  People flock down here to “turn their life around” but, for most, the same old baggage soon shows up--drugs, debt, booze, criminal record. 

Last Saturday night, some depressed, despondent, dejected, demoralized, and above all, determined gentleman jumped from the sixteenth floor of a Jacksonville hotel. When he hit (at something like a hundred MPH) he hit a car in the valet parking lot.  And so, not only do we have someone self-killing themselves, but we also have someone’s car destroyed, we have an evening when all who stumble upon the grisly scene feel totally flushed, and we certainly have some very shaken souls among those tasked with cleaning up all the blood, guts and bones. The sincere pity I feel for the deceased is assuaged by his selfishness in not considering what his very public death would do to we who are witnesses. To those of you standing on that ledge right now, or those of you waiting for that next freight train, or those of you looking at that loaded smoke wagon on the night stand, a request:  Do it, if you must, but please, for God’s sake, please do not drag the rest of us into it.  If you decide that you want off this whirling blue ball, please DO NOT leave a giant bloody mess for the rest of us to clean up.

If the day ever comes, I vow to humanity that I will find some extremely isolated area and do myself there; a place where my rotting carcass might at least give sustenance to other life forms and zero people will have to clean me up.  Promise.