My ex-husband has been called nothing more than a lot of hot air. I think that's fair. He is certainly full of it, anyway. He doesn't have a lot of sense, either. That old saying goes, "He doesn't have the sense to come in out of the rain." Check. That would be why he found himself on a beach in the middle of a hurricane.
It was 1988, and the hurricane was Florence, a little nonsense depression that blew up into a hurricane overnight, right at the time my own personal windbag was heading to the Gulf Coast to meet some customers and do some business entertaining. I will let you imagine the confluence of two great forces of nature colliding, but I think it's possible that Hurricane Florence was spawned by my ex-husband. Although I was supposed to go, I couldn't find a babysitter for our little boy, only three at the time, so we were left behind in Memphis, while he headed off for fun and adventure on the Panhandle beaches of Destin, Florida. I can't say I was too sorry, since I didn't like the looks of the storm I had been watching on the news during the last couple days before he left. He didn't take my worries any more seriously than he took that storm, so he was totally unconcerned about running into any possible problems.
The beach bum called me many hours later, quite awhile after he should have arrived, in fact, to gloat that he was standing on the white sand at the water's edge. Alone. No one there. Just him. Very weird.
He should have known something was up when every single car was headed in the opposite direction, and he was the only vehicle on the road going to the coast, but he never was one for following the crowd. Personally, I would have taken the road closed signs seriously. But being him, he probably thought they were clearing the way for him to provide a diversion for the waiting crowds.
So the next thing I know, the hurricane is all the news on the television, while he is calling me from the ocean front to tell me the waves were simply spectacular, but there was no one around to entertain. When I mentioned the possibility of a hurricane dampening the enthusiasm, he had no idea one was even on the horizon.
I pictured him standing on the sand in what he considered his stylish attire, flowing pants, tight shirt, little bits of his already thinning hair flapping in the wind, while he held the bartender hostage to his conversation, which was probably more deadly than the hurricane. I have to be honest, if I had to choose between my ex or a hurricane, I wouldn't bet against my ex to cause the most damage. Florence made landfall the day after he got there, the area he was in under a hurricane warning. Apparently he spent most of that time on the beach, oblivious, waiting for the crowd.
Which is sort of how he has spent his life. Waiting....
