eating peanuts

after a typical redeye {straight this time} caffeine-induced high had me still planning to be an art minor while planning my future in the coffee shop, my father and i got lunch and walked around for a while before driving the backroads of west beaufort and getting in the way of all the citizens trying to go about their business. there are just so many empty airstrips, unpaved roads, and rotting boats to see while not looking at the road. they probably didnt appreciate the speed - round ten below - he was driving either.

oh well

back at the condo we walked out to the beach and, after setting up the umbrella and chairs, relaxed a great deal while reading books and getting tan. actually, only i was getting tan. after a while, my sister and a friend of hers, melissa {<-- not her real name}, from soccer and who happens to live a mile and a half down the island, walked up and got in the water. after a minute, we joined them. we have a strange nickelodeon throwing thing that is orange and a really odd consistency and well... thats not important. we stand out in the waves and try and throw it. it is easy to see, in situations like this, how the family dynamic changes a little. my sister, usually grumpy, was a little brighter and talkative because she was basically the link between the two of us and mel. we tried to stand in a wobbly square but once she drifted over to retrieve the orange thing and then a wave came. as we all jumped over it, our group appeared to me as a giant L where my family was the long, tall part, and mel was the little lip. there was an indelible separation there.

melissa is a good girl. that is the easiest way to describe her. she isnt obviously beautiful or very skinny or even an open extrovert but rather soft, sweet, polite, pretty, and really quite pleasant. i mean, she is wonderful and enjoyable to be around. i am not saying that i have a crush on her at all but of all my sisters soccer friends, she is the one that annoys me the least. it occured to me, walking back to the condo, that she has probably never smoked or gotten drunk or had sex or anything. sounds more than a bit like me. the sheer fact that she is utterly good and polite, in the context of the united states of america, ought to count for something. however, in the context of the world, our bleeding world, she isnt doing a damn thing.

in a completely unrelated incident, as we were walking up the steps from the beach, a man and a woman passed us and i heard the man say, "im kind of ok with it, i just cant... eat peanuts anymore." i can only imagine what the rest of that conversation was like...