Now and then I think about writing a novel. But who doesn’t? We all think we have a Barbara Cartland hiding in our plummy prose. Or, worse, a John Grisham.
Having a house on the laguna has proven to be a writer’s mother lode of raw material. For almost any writing project.
When I returned to the house on Wednesday afternoon, I grabbed a rake and headed out to the laguna to see how much vegetation had grown back in my absence. Other than a boom in water lily pads, everything was about where I left it a month ago.
While I was fishing out some water lettuce along the shoreline, a group of five or six young boys (I would guess around 8 years old or so) came along the pathway and stopped on the bank above me.
That is not unusual. The sight of an old, overweight white guy with a gimpy leg mucking around in the marsh always seems to amuse the local kids.
Usually, the boys start a conversation about what I am doing and why I would be silly enough to do it. But not this gang. They just stood quietly behind and above me.
Then I heard giggling about the same time I heard the flow of water. When I turned around, the boy who appeared to be the leader of this lot had his pants down and was trying to urinate on me.
Fortunately, he was not man enough to complete his mission. Failing that attempt, he started waggling his boy wand at me while reciting a list of Spanish words not commonly used in the presence of mothers.
The other boys took their cue from him and joined in what must be the local version of mooning.
I would have chased them off. But the best I could do in my position was bark at them and return to my work. Having lost my attention, they wandered off with their underage Chippendale act.
Now that I think about it, I am not certain I would ever be able to use that incident in a novel.
So, it will have to do as a blog post.
