Running Thoughts

If a girl wearing a thong moons you … does it make a difference?

As I ran passed the girls wearing thongs on the beach today I was struck by another random running thought. When I run random thoughts pop into my head.

Some are keepers and turn into my daily musings. Others are unanswerable questions like this one (though I’m certain that some of you have the answer). Sometimes my mind goes blank and the beach in front of me may as well in another universe then I snap out of it and I’m half a mile further along than last time I noticed.

How do they put air into a tennis ball? I wonder as I watch a boy throw one into the waves and laugh with glee as it carries it back to him.

Today was an adventurous run as there are a lot of people here. Spring Break is breaking all around me! I love it!

So as I ran north on the south end there is bank of sand dunes and laying there two is a couple making love. The term “sandy bottoms” comes to mind. I don’t want to be rude so I keep going though I do wonder how they will get all of the sand of their mouths, their bottoms and God knows where else?

Making my way past the jetty I notice the season’s first cannon ball jellyfish have washed ashore. These are the only species of jellyfish that do not sting. Tourists don’t know that and shriek and take wide steps out of the way.

The Bored, which meets every day in front of Fannie’s-On-The-Beach to celebrate life on the island, has come up with another category … there are tourists and then there are “Tourons” (tourist + moron = Touron). In spite of our outward appearance the Bored really does think about things.

When Chelsea was a little girl she and I spent days on the beach together. Just she and I. Tourists would spot a dead cannonball jellyfish, scream, poke dead marsh oats into it and stay way back. It might jump from the sand and sting them!

Little Chelsea would stroll over into the midst of the family and pick it up. Tossing it up in the air like a baseball she would look and yell “HEY DAD! Want to play catch?” Then she’d throw it at me.

So if you put peanut butter on a jellyfish what would you have? If it was crunchy peanut butter, would it make a difference?

Making my way further along I see that the marshes on Back River are being cleaned by the ocean’s rising tides. The marsh turns dark brown after it dies and as the new green marsh grows underneath it pushes last year’s sea grass up. High tide fills the marsh twice each day carrying a load of last year’s marsh out to sea. A lot of it washes ashore and I run through it.

A lot of people complain about living in the south because it doesn’t have four seasons. But it does. Just study the seasons of the marsh. In winter it is brown. In spring it turns light green. By summer, Fran has risen from the dead, and it is a thousand shades of green. In the fall, it turns golden yellow and then brown.

It’s as beautiful as any leaves on trees changing color. I don’t why people go so nuts over that. Hell, they can name more types of cars that they are driving than they can the trees of changing leaves that they are seeing.

Running under the pier (or Touron Central according to the Bored), I suddenly worry that Sam Adams is looking for me. Sunday is of course Easter, as if anybody couldn’t know that, and Sam is after me to participate in the Sunrise Service. When I was informed that it was Palm Sunday earlier this week by Sam, he immediately started asking to participate in the Easter service.

For a thousand years there have been four churches on Tybee; Baptists, Catholics, Methodists and Episcopalians … a little something for everybody. And for years they have rotated who would be the lead sponsor for the Easter sunrise service. This year however there is a fifth church.

Yep! Bar Church! Tybee Church which meets in the Wind Rose Bar every Sunday! They are the lead sponsor of this year’s Easter Sunrise service. Sam, Gordon and the entire band will be on the Pier. I’m uncertain at this point as to the roles of the ministers of the Baptist, Catholic, Methodist or Episcopalian Churches … I have a hard time seeing them singing “Jesus is just alright with me” along with the band but … it could happen.

I turn on Twelfth Street and make my home. In preparation for Easter which I’ve thought about since I learned that last Sunday was Palm Sunday, I baptize myself in the holy water of the outdoor shower.