I was having a great day at the beach. The ocean rolled me onto the wet sand along with a few hundred of my friends. I guess you could say they were more acquaintances than friends. I didn’t know their names. We all sensed each other’s presence. Contrary to popular belief, we like being out of water at low tide, as long as we time it carefully, so the rising tide brings us back out to sea, because otherwise we’d suffocate and that would defeat the purpose. So we’re just wriggling a bit in the sunset, enjoying some time at the shoreline when all of a sudden up walks this little boy in a bathing suit with surfboards on it. He scoops me up in his cupped hands and I’m saying what do you think you’re doing? I was having a perfectly fine afternoon on the sand. But he can’t understand me because there’s no sound coming out of my tube feet. They just ripple a bit at their points. I see him look out at the ocean and look down at me with these big hopeful eyes and look out at the ocean again. He places me in the center of his small right hand, spreads his feet, takes one step back, and draws back his arm like a slingshot and I go oh no, not that! But he doesn’t understand what I’m saying through my tube feet ripples. He’s already launched me through the air. So now I’m sailing over the sea with nothing to break my fall, not lucky enough to have wings like the sea gulls, nothing to keep me in the air and then I’m dropping fast, tumbling end over end, point over point, everything spinning, making me dizzy and nauseous and then PLUNK! into the cold salt water and I come to rest a couple feet under. I think about all my friends back on the beach, no way to swim back to them, because I’m not built that way. None of us are, as soft inhabitants of the current. No more PLUNKS so I’m guessing he’s lost interest in launching us into the air. In fact, I was the only one he picked. I imagine he has a big smile on his face now as he thinks about how he sent me back “home” and how it for sure made such a difference to me, but it hasn’t, not really. The ocean’s never felt like my home. It’s the beach I want to be on. Because I’m free there to feel the breeze and the sun on my tube feet and be with my friends until the tide comes back up to draw us in before dark. I was having a great day before he showed up. I had lots of company. I wasn’t thinking about the ocean for once and how big and empty it is. But I guess that’s just how things go. You get scooped up without warning and thrown like a seashell as far as someone’s strength will take you. Then you start missing where you were and wondering about the things that seem to move you by design in a world that’s tucked into another world, which is tucked into another one just like it. You wonder if anyone noticed you were there beside them, now that you’re gone.
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