1993
PARENTS
It’s ’93 and as I cruise through the Bahamas I’m starting to think maybe I can pull this cruising thing off. Back then I still had family coming, in fact this’ll be my 1st visitors my parents spending a week in the sun aboard Thalia with me. It occurs to me that as a boat bum you have the ability to bring a family much closer together, like 38’, especially if they’re other option is a Canadian winter and Toronto has a particularly evil winter, snow, ice, freezing rain, usually not cold enough to knock down the humidity which makes it hard to dress for. How can you blame them, or anyone, for choosing to visit. And I used to live to ski. Remembering how supportive my entire family has been on this apparent change in my lifestyle and like the dutiful son I believe myself to be I hitchhiked out to the airport to await their arrival, my guess being that my folks will pop for a taxi back to the anchorage. I got there with time to spare and settled down with my book. I should set the scene a bit here, I’ve not seen them in a 1 ½ yrs, I figure they’ve not changed appreciably and have seen me with long hair, though not recently, they’ve never seen me with a beard. I used to be a gym rat and got used to shaving in a very hot shower. It’s easy and painless, a disposable razor lasts forever, the hot water is the trick. Guess what Thalia doesn’t have at anchor, yeah, limitless hot water. My experiments in shaving were painful so I stopped somewhere in Florida.
My folks show up and I saunter up to my father who’s viewing me like someone who is about to ask “Got any spare change?” “How are you doing?” I venture as an ice breaker, “Fine” is the respon se. “How was your flight?” I try “Fine.” What a conversationalist. “You don’t have any idea who the f**k I am, do you?” I burst out. “Geordie, Jesus, go do that to your mother” he entreats. I approach the woman who allegedly carried me for 9 mths and let’s not go into 2 yrs of breast feeding. Exactly the same thing happens, my first thought was “Why did I ever stop seeing my shrink? Oh yeah, he’s 2,000 mi away.”. I appear to be one of those people who are effectively disguised by facial hair, as long as I keep my mouth shut, it works, I’m also blessed with a nasal voice, a dead giveaway. When I got to Venezuala the kids would point to me and scream “Chuck Norris, Chuck Norris.” These days what I get is Lee Marvin, who is dead.
A few yrs later I’m working in St Marteen and Ulla, the Danish nurse and love of my life has returned to Denmark to do a nursing gig. Danish tax laws are brutal, her brother, a serious yuppie accountant paid 78% ignoring VAT, Ulla would go back in Nov, make $5,000 tax free in that year and another $5,000 the following year and return in Feb rich, well, sort of. Sweet. So Ulla returns tomorrow and I resolve to cut my hair short and beard off just to mess with her. A hair dresser friend of mine does the deed and I actually purchase a razor to complete it. I go to work the following morning and peggy who ran the office, a woman I’d worked with for almost 2 yrs, flashes her winning smile and enquires “Can I help you, sir?” “S**t Peggy, it’s me” “George, damn, you look different.” Killer smile. “Yeah, I’m just trying to confuse Ulla, like in Monty Python’s ‘Confuse a Cat’ episode.” I explain. “Well, that’ll do it.” She vows.
Off to the airport in one of Necol’s beater service cars and wait for Ulla’s flight, it arrives and I stand quietly about 5’ from Ulla while she searches the diminishing crowd for, I presume, me. “Want to go out to the boat? Says the Donald Duck impersonator and I received a huge hug and the whispered words “It’ll all grow back. Right?” I swear I have a chin and everything. We get back and at happy hour hit the local so Ulla can reconnect with our friends. “Ulla, welcome back, how was Denmark?” goes the happy chatter, I just stand there smiling and eventually it turns to “who’s that with you Ulla?” “Oh, that’s Peter, we connected in Denmark and he returned with me for a vacation.” She says with a smile. “Uh, great, but what about George?” comes the questions “Yeah, that’s going to be a problem. Maybe you guys can help me out there by keeping it a secret for a while.” Still smiling. So now I’m listening to my friends swearing silence as to Peter’s existence. Nice. Eventually I was forced to open my mouth and the fantasy fell to bits, but I got a couple of mths worth of digs at my so called friends. George and Thalia
“If I’m lyin’…”