SUNSHINE ON A CLOUDY DAY

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (06-22-23)

 

     They don't call me a genius for nothing. I would have to pay handsomely for them to call me that, and I'm talking Brad Pitt or Richard Gere numbers. I wonder if they take a personal check. Anyway, my genius idea is this: The experts say that climate change is real, and I hope they're right, because I'm going to take a million dollars and invest it in real estate at whatever corner of the Earth has the worst climate. And when the climate changes, guess who's going to be rich? If I can figure out where to take the million dollars from. 

     We were recently vacationing in Ocean City, Maryland, when the climate changed  and going to the beach was out of the question. So we had to find some other stuff to do, and the first thing we did was hit the miniature golf course. I don't play real golf, and if you asked me what my handicap is, it's that I suck at golf. Plus, if I'm that close to the shore, and I'm trapped in sand, let it be at the beach where a whole bunch of women in bikinis are trapped there too. And another thing: If I'm going to spend four hours playing a sport, I'd like to justify it by saying I got some exercise. That's why I play tennis instead. I can't play right now because I broke my foot playing tennis, but on the plus side, for the 11 months I've been sidelined I haven't been injured playing tennis.

     I have a new system of scoring miniature golf, where I only write down a number if one of us uses more or less strokes than the other to get the ball in the cup. So I record the difference for each hole or no number at all if we tie, and add it up at the end. I sometimes lose track of whether I wrote the figure as a plus score or a minus score, but I always win, more or less.

     If the weather isn't warm and sunny you can take a stroll on the boardwalk and  find a place to hang as you savor a cocktail and people-watch for a little while. Sometimes people seem to be watching me when I'm trying to watch THEM, so we agree to trade off. There are public restrooms in Ocean City, but remember, changing of clothes is prohibited, so dress in something that you really like. Since there are no more telephone booths, is changing of clothes prohibited even for Superman? I guess they don't want Superman to change into The Flash.

     You can always go to a museum, such as the Ocean City Life-Saving Station Museum, which was once an outpost of the U.S. Coast Guard and dates back to 1891. It's the safest place to be no matter how hard it's raining outside; no one has ever drowned there.

     An "escape room," might be just the thing if the weather is not cooperating. We passed one and I thought I heard someone yelling from inside, but maybe it was just that my imagination had been captured.

     The weather wasn't so bad that it prevented us from looking around, considering the area for a possible second home. I'm kind of picky about names, though. I don't think I would thrive in a place called "Willow Chase." For god's sake just let them be. "Meadow Wood" is another actual place we passed. If you can't decide whether you're a meadow or a wood, there isn't much I can do for you, you can't be both. Perhaps the most insulting town we drove by was Kitts Hummock in Delaware. "Hey Kitt, you'll never guess what we named after you!" "OOOOH, is it a canyon???" "Nope." "A lake???" "Keep guessing." "Was it a-" "It's a HUMMOCK! We named a hummock after you because you always used to say it was so peaceful when you slept there!" "Oh okay. That was a HAMMOCK I was talking about." When we got back to Ocean City there was a sign that said "Lots For Sale," but we didn't see anything but acres and acres of empty land.

     The next day was cloudy again, so we took Gidget the Dog to the Farmer's Market in nearby Berlin. There you could get homemade soap, honey, cheese, crafts, maple syrup and baked goods. At least I assume they were, you certainly couldn't sell baked goods that were bad without some sort of disclaimer. And wouldn't you know it, right in the middle of Berlin was a wall. I wanted to stage an informal protest. TEAR DOWN THAT WALL! It was holding up an ice cream shop and I was holding up traffic, so I couldn't really get the crowd on my side. Instead we got ourselves a chocolate cone and solved some of the world's injustices the easy way.