Here is the fourth installment of Keys stories. This one (like the first two) is in the same Hemingway style and has typos and wrong grammar since I’m writing it in the voice of someone who is trying to sound like someone else so hard that they’re not good at it.

I only point this out to avoid messages from concerned friends sending well meaning writing tips and corrections. It’s fun to be silly and ridiculous. Enjoy!

Among the people

As a seasoned traveler of irregular frequency I keep a curated list of things that annoy me to varying degrees. One point frequently at or near the top of my list is getting a rental car with a license plate of the state I am visiting.

What is the point of traveling if you cannot be easily identified as the out-of-towner that in fact needs an additional portion of grace when trying to merge in your traffic with unspoken rules that make no sense. How can I throw caution to the wind in the face of local customs and standards if you think I’m from the other side of town.

Do not look at me all askew if I make a left turn when the traffic signal is still red. Look at the plates. According to them I am from Virginia and Virginia is for Lovers and I love to follow where my heart tells me to go. And if my heart tells me to turn left from the far right lane, that is what I will do.

Merging in traffic? Cutting off other drivers? Again, I implore you to check the plates. I am from Mississippi. It has been only in my lifetime that paved roads and traffic signals became the norm.

This afternoon after we had taken our lunch at a local well-regarded seafood brasserie we stopped for necessities at a pharmacy with a purveyor of fine spirits next door. Loving Wife and Loving Child left me to do the shopping and went to a nearby shop in search of someone to add to Loving Child’s travel stuffie party.

I acquired the necessities and a treat for myself from the fine spirits shop and returned to our rental car, a modest gray imported sedan and found it locked.

Loving Wife had the keys and was still shopping with Loving Child.

As I waited a few moments and considered what we could do with the rest of our afternoon together.

Just then, a midsize sport utility vehicle pulled into the parking lot and parked in a space roughly 20 feet from me. Saying that the driver parked is like saying Jaws was just a piranha. The car was halfway in the spot with its rear half still in the lane of traffic blocking other cars from passing.

Parking is a lost art and will surely contribute to the decline and fall of western civilization.

Oblivious to the state of her attempt at parking the driver and her companion, of approximately the same age, both smartly dressed for a trip to the pharmacy exited the car and started walking toward the store.

At this point I was still in shock at the abysmal job the driver did attempting to park and my expression likely appeared to the outside observer of staring off into the middle distance with my mind somewhere else. The shoppers were talking to each other as they walked. I looked at them as they passed and they both clutched their purses tighter and quickened their pace despite the fact that my hands were currently occupied with the bags of my recently acquired bounty. A few steps further and I heard the driver make a comment how she wished that all rental car had plates from other states so it would be easier to identify the non-locals on the roads.

Ma’am, this is a Walgreens parking lot.

I returned my attention to my on plight: wanting to sit down in the car.

I called Loving Wife to ascertain her location and asked her about an approximate estimate of when she and Loving Child would return. To my great fortune she informed me that they had completed their shopping and were on their way back to meet me at our modest gray imported sedan.

Not a moment later I saw Loving Wife and Loving Child round the corner with their bounty in tow. Loving Child yelled from a distance, “papa! I got a bunny!”

“Of course you did, my Loving Child. Your mama and I love you very much!” I said.

“Did you get what you needed, papa?” Loving Wife said.

“I did,” I said, “now lets go home with our new treasures and bounty,” I said.

I shared my experience of the suspicious local matrons and said, “Loving Wife, I am ready to return to our refuge. We have spent enough time today among the people.”

just add water

A new day on one of the rocks Hemingway probably transgressed on his way to the furthest western Key has been a lesson in physics. Specifically about thermos dynamics I believe it’s called. The one about heat.

For the same water that can open the bouquet of the finest petrol station whiskey can soften the potatoe and harden the egg to the consistency of a fresh mud clot texture. Water can do all that. On this morning water made the fresh hot coffee for myself and loving wife and made the lemonade for loving child.

Unsated with her station in life loving child demanded one or both of us entertain her despite our own wants and needs. For clarity, loving child’s standard of what is acceptable currency to be considered play is playing “family” or “pet adoption” with her movable feast of travel stuffies. I, being the loving provider I pride myself greatly on, fell on loving child’s tiny sword and offered myself as tribute to her volcanic god of play.

Someone, who is dead now, most likely a Greek I cannot bring to mind at the moment, once said, “hell is other people.” I beg greatly to differ. Hell is in fact compulsory make-believe play with a five-year-old who fluidly changes the rules, plot, and characters at speeds unmatched on this mortal coil and fills with anger when every point of the session is not immediately recalled in photogenic memory detail.

Once loving child was sated with her play and the animal stuffies had been adopted an untellable number of times she was hungry. As is her wont she was not hungry for anything that existed in the refrigerator. No. She was hungry for some untellable morsel, possibly mythical, that she would only reveal to us if we guessed correctly. Not unlike a mythical being charged with guarding a bridge.

It was a battle of the minds. However, in the end I won and gloriously so. I took from the refrigerator a piece leftover pizza pie and warmed it in the microwave for exactly 16 seconds. Outraged that I would dare nourish myself before her, loving child demanded the portion of pizza pie and devoured it like a feral koala bear eating a really good leaf.

Checkmate.

The need to acquire further rations and necessities was obvious to loving wife and myself and we made a plan to venture out on the Key. After stopping for a coffee to bolster our spirits, an iced Cortado if you must know, we traveled to a grocers. Not the kind they have up north. No. We made intention to shop at a chain store only found in the south.

I fully expected it to be a cultural experience akin to anthropological field work but was equal parts disappointed and overjoyed when the only real difference was the name of the store brand tortilla chips. During our shopping, loving child grew increasingly restless and agitated. So much so that even chocolate covered ice cream novelties on a stick in the shape of the head of a cartoon mouse would not soothe her building rage.

In a moment of gesperation - that is desperation that ends up being a genius move - I told loving daughter that we could go in the pool as soon as we got back to the house but we had to finish our grocery shopping first and if we finished quickly she would have more time in the pool before dinner. Loving child took a beat to consider my pledge and an instant later the glow from the angelic halo that appeared above her head was blinding. Our shopping finished we returned to the house. Loving child jumped into the pool and was greatly overjoyed.

Later, loving wife asked how I had thought to offer the promise of the pool as a way to calm her down. I said to loving wife, “I recall something I heard attributed to a wise old woman who said about babies and children loving water and thought to myself, ‘papa, just add water’ and it worked.”

Loving wife, tired from all the activities of the day, looked at me and said, “ah yes, just add water.”