From the Archives — Carrabelle, Florida. November, 2016

Back in the fall of 2016 I’d just moved out of my house in Boone and was getting to know my newly acquired RV, Roadcinante. I accepted an invitation from my dear friend and writing buddy, Eileen Drennen (you should really check her out, her essays are gorgeous and her memoir is going to be spectacular), to join her and her sweet husband Terry in Carrabelle, Florida for Thanksgiving. I rented a spot at an RV campground across the road from Carrabelle Beach. Below is a piece I posted on my then-active blog, originally titled “Let’s Hear it for the Weirdos.”

Traveling back in time to November, 2016.

Graphic from Sweatpants and Coffee

There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”

Thomas Merton, Trappist Monk and Mystic

(November, 2016) Saturday I pulled up stakes in Carrabelle Beach and headed north, stopping overnight in Macon to share a hotel room with my dogs and, as it turned out, a few sneaky little roaches. When I mentioned that to the lady at the front desk, she shrugged. “Yeah, they come in when the weather starts to turn.” I stood there long enough that she finally did go fetch a clipboard and at least pretend to write it down.

I arrived back at the campground in Boone, which by comparison to Carrabelle Beach falls more than a bit short, and it isn’t just because in Florida I had a beach across the street. It was really nice being at an RV park where everything was clean and new, and all the lights worked.

My first week here at the Boone campground I discovered the fluorescent light in the women’s bathroom functions only part of the time, and the part of the time it functions is apparently never when I am trying to use it. The first night, after fiddling with the switch to no avail, I finally went in there with my headlamp and the dogs, and locked the door behind me. The room is windowless, so other than my headlamp it was pitch black. The light bounced around from the mirror to the concrete block walls to the dogs’ startled faces. With the dripping shower faucet, it was all very Blair Witch. A couple days later I brought a small lamp from my office, which I have to vacate by mid-December anyway. Problem solved, but the mold smell is still pretty overpowering, and this morning I confess, I wished for the clean, bright bathhouse back in Florida.

I met some interesting folks in Carrabelle, mostly through their dogs. There was the guy in a muscle shirt with a high and tight fade cut using his best bad-ass strut to walk a blue pit bull. Her name was Phoebe, and she wagged frantically while trying as hard as she could to kiss me on the lips. The instant he began talking about her he got all gooey and doe-eyed. He told me he’d rescued her from an agency. I heard the story of how she was skin and bones and not expected to survive. I looked at her sturdy legs and smooth, shiny coat and the ripped young man holding her leash and thought, “Girl, you hit pay-dirt.” They were both completely adorable.

There was a man and woman with a pair of Dobermans, one friendly, the other not so much (the Dobes). The friendly one came forward to meet me, gazing up in guarded admiration with his top teeth protruding a little; the other dog hung back behind her dad’s leg and eyed me with mistrust. I respected that completely.

I saw but did not talk with a petite man trying to manage two skittering Dachshunds as they zigzagged in opposite directions on their leashes. That guy looked worn-out.

There was also a couple with two beautiful standard Poodles. Every time I saw the man he was wearing a white t-shirt and cut-off blue jean shorts, and his legs seemed to go on forever. The woman always walked ahead. The dogs strolled along with a decidedly aloof elegance, sort of above it all, like they were peering over an invisible fence at something the rest of us could never hope to see.

My neighbor to the left had a Yorkie-poo named Katie, a nickname for Catherine, as the puppy had been named for the Duchess of Windsor. The woman told me she wants a Boxer but worries it would be too big for their RV. I looked at her 40-foot rig and then my 19-foot van, with my two monsters crammed inside, and laughed.

“They do take up a good bit of room,” I said. “We’re always stepping over each other. But then, it was like that at home, too.” Anyone who’s had Boxers can attest this is true. You might live in a 5,000 square foot house, but you are going to trip over a dog every time you turn around. They just like to be close, that’s all.

She and I chatted in passing a couple more times. She sweetly invited me to Thanksgiving dinner that Thursday morning. “Don’t be a stranger,” she said. “Come on over.” I thanked her and explained I’d be heading out to eat with friends.

Later, after her brood had arrived, she gestured and said, “Come here. I want to tell you something.”

After Katie had greeted me by bouncing on her hind legs for me to pick her up (which of course I did, duh), the woman shared that a relative had driven over for the day with his kids. The middle-grade ages son, whom she had not previously met, was “walking around wearing a top hat.”

She looked at me for my reaction. I shrugged. “Oh,” I said.

“Apparently, he is some kind of genius, and when you talk to him he only wants to talk about atoms,” she told me, and then added, “I think he’s weird.”

I didn’t tell her I’m a writer, or that I’ve been obsessing about quantum mechanics for the better part of my adult life. I didn’t mention that I’m currently working on an essay about my trip to CERN, and that far too often I stare at objects and people, imagining the busily vibrating particles they are made of.

“You realize in ten years he’s going to be a billionaire, right?” I said, and she laughed.

Then I said, “You know, these kids who are so bright, their minds are always spinning, there is so much going on.” I imagined his brain, the internal universe with all the supernovae lighting up, stars winking on and off, suns talking to other suns.

She nodded. “The other kids, they tell me ‘We don’t want to play with him.’”

That hurt to hear. I thought of all kinds of things to say but stayed silent. Then she said, “You’re right, he’ll probably be a billionaire by the time he’s 30.”

“And those kids will be kicking themselves, saying, ‘Man, how come we never stayed in touch with him?’” I said.

It was an awkward conversation with someone I did not know, but in truth she did not seem mean-spirited. It seemed more like she was trying to figure something out, pin down what seemed elusive, classify what resisted defining.

Like she was puzzling out how to deal with someone who seemed so “other,” so different. So alien.

When the fact is, in a way we are all aliens, really. I mean, here we are, each with our own oddities and foibles, locked into these bodies, which honestly sometimes we are not all that at home in. And we are looking for ways to connect, but then we are also looking for ways to hide, and to hide those part of ourselves where we almost seem like strangers to ourselves.

In truth, so often we know full well, even though we might project something different, that we are uniquely weird in our own fashion.

Of course, because I am a word nerd, I looked up the etymology of “weird” and learned it originally conveyed the idea of power, of being in control of destiny or fate (associated with the Norse “Norns.”).

Only later was the word associated with what is odd or strange, something to be avoided or shunned. Here is the whole beautiful thing from the Online Etymology Dictionary.

That evening I saw the boy in the top hat. He was tall and lanky and carried himself with a sort of guileless confidence. As he left with his father, I thought I saw atoms or light or something sparking in the vicinity of his head. Or maybe it was just the sun sending out flares as it set over the water.

Whatever it was, I say let’s hear it for the weirdos. For I am most certainly one. And maybe you are, too.