The Boat Is Back, The Beard Is Trimmed

These days I mostly react to stress much the same way I always have: escapism. This time, though, I tried something new. I grew a beard.

It seemed like a perfectly legitimate middle-aged thing to do. It is much cheaper than buying a classic car. I do not know how to drive a motorcycle, so getting into suburban-dwelling-old-man Harley culture is out of the question, too. Yet something had to give. So I let my whiskers go.

Then I noticed the boat. Not a specific boat. Well sort of. I mean, there are a few specific boats that I have noticed. The point is that I began to notice that I, beard and all, began to notice boats.

Now quickly, in my defense, I have to say that I am one fine boat captain. Well, at least I can say that I am an impressive remote controlled amusement park tug boat captain. Get me on the rudder of one of those tugs, and I’ll navigate it through the tunnel and dock it in all the slips before the two-dollar-token fuel runs dry. The most trouble I have piloting a remote controlled tug at SeaWorld or Legoland is the inevitable snotty pre-teen boy who notices what I’m up to and takes it upon himself to ram his tug into mine. It creates more of a hassle than anything else, and sometimes I have to back my boat into a slip, bumping the little twerp’s tug away until I’m safe. I never make eye contact with those brats. Always, I let my tug do the talking.

So it’s not like I’m not cut out for open ocean travel. It is in my DNA. Sure I got seasick on a cruise ship, once. (Yes, I know Sweetheart, I remember it was on the night of the Baked Alaska.) And I puked on a deep sea fishing boat, once. That is only two times in dozens of voyages. Though, none of them have been recent. Which has got me wondering, What happened? How did it turn out that growing up fishing in the ocean on a pretty regular basis has turned into browsing used boats on Craigslist?

Is it just escapism? Maybe, despite the grandest efforts of my 100 Thing Challenge, I’ll always list mallward, blown and tossed by the dream of buying my way out of life’s discomforts. Or maybe...now I’m not trying to justify anything here, this is a genuine inquiry...maybe there has been a gaping dysfunction in my life over the past ten years that I’ve spent off the water. Landlubber or not, perhaps the 100 Thing Challenge has helped me uncover something that I’ve been missing; something that’s been blocked from my sight by all the stuff I’ve owned, and all the time I’ve spent buying it.

It is probably more complicated than that. Ever been on a deep sea fishing boat? Yeah, not exactly a zen-like crowd of life-happy humans. Even so, I’m not willing to write off this recurring boat theme so easily this time. Not as easily as I dismissed the beard, anyway. It’s trimmed into a five o’clock shadow that will, soon enough, get shaved.

Perhaps I should start all over.

Comments

[Ember]

Sounds to me like whittling away your possessions has given you a taste for freedom. :0)