Drifting Through Paradise

     Its Friday friends. Today is the day that Special Lady arrives. The galley is stocked, the cabin is cleaned, the hull is washed, the head is empty. I straightened out  the Aft Berth under the cockpit for me to sleep in so The Lady can have my bed in the forward area. I think I have everything done. According to the weather its supposed to be nice all weekend.

A lot of people have asked if I will share the identity of this Lady. No I won’t share that, for the same reason I use monikers for my friends I mention, Privacy.  I have mentioned her in previous blogs though, under another moniker, which one? My Special Lady is the Decorus Inferus Campana. For my readers who didn’t go to Catholic School or take Latin, that translates to Beautiful Southern Belle, and that my friends, is exactly what she is. A true Lady, as the ones who do know her true identity can attest too, she is beautiful straight through, not just her outwardly appearance, but her mind, her speech, and her heart are just plain beautiful.

Where did a salty old pyrate meet such a Decorus Inferus Campana, where else but in the south. Over two decades ago.

What was this pyrate like back then…Well, We were teenagers when we met, Children of the Eighty’s………… so lets do the ‘Time Warp Again’…….

The year was 1981, I wanted a pair of Levi 501’s, the response I got from my mother was “we cant afford those just because you want them, if you want them get a job and buy your own”. So I did. At thirteen I got a job up the street from our house at the new multiplex dollar theater with the south’s largest game room, The Queen Park. I worked as an usher, tearing tickets, sweeping the floor, picking up after people after the show. All for $2.15 per hour, well below minimum wage because I was a minor and different labor laws applied to minors back then. My pappy worked for the Police Department, my mother at the  Greyhound phone center. I lived in the neighborhood, but I went to a different school than all my friends. When it was time for high school, I left the private school I was attending to go to school with my friends from the ‘hood.

The house I grew up in was on the corner, big oak tree in the front and to the side of that a fifty foot tall flag pole that pappy put up. Every morning he would raise the flag.  At sunset he would lower it. Every house we lived, he put a flag pole up. Later in life when he wasn’t able to raise it because of his health, he would watch as my mother, my step kids, or I would raise and lower it on the tri-mast with a yard arm at their home in Indiana. Every year he would get a new flag. and take the old one to the VFW for them to dispose of properly according to Flag etiquette.

Walk out the front door, straight down the steps of the brick and wood siding ranch style house, past the flag pole and up the street, past the school, up the hill, past Zak’s Hamburger’s and the Circle K. Across the main road was the theater I worked at. If I went out the house and crossed the street, down a block, turn right then left and went straight to the end, was the park I played in with my friends. Football, baseball, basketball, Chase, capture the flag, then as got older we used the park to get drunk and stoned.

The apartments were along the edge of the park, right next to home plate, that’s where most of my friends lived. The Special Lady lived here once. We knew each other then. We were friends, we never dated or anything though, she says back then I was a player. My best friend Scooby told me I should make a move but even though I was a bit of a player then, I never tried. She had been to my house, I had been to hers, but I never tried a thing. Why? Was I afraid of losing her as a friend? No. Was I afraid of rejection? Nooooo. Why not then? I couldn’t answer that question back then. But after the responses to a recent blog, I can answer that question now…….

Timing  my Friends. Timing. I am no longer that boy I was. No longer a stoner. Went to college and served my country, I became a respectable businessman, made a good living and became an accomplished writer. I knew even back then, that this Special Lady, The Decorus Inferus Campana, deserved more than a punk hood. Timing. Twenty three years later, we speak again. What will come of it? Is the timing right now? Will this friendship become more?  Only Time will tell…….

But I can tell you, no matter what becomes of it, Hers is a Friendship I am blessed to have.  In this friendship, twenty plus years since we met, this pyrate has found a buried treasure, a treasure I will hold dear and always cherish…………

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