Yes, I am a Pirate

 Week Four: Yes, I am a Pirate

Yes I am a pirate, two hundred years too late

The cannons don’t thunder, there’s nothing to plunder

I’m an over-forty victim of fate

Arriving too late, arriving too late…

—Jimmy Buffett, A Pirate Looks at Forty, from the album A1A

Life is timing—so they say—like chancing upon a seashell or meeting the pirate that you only imagined. I have examples of both, and I know first-hand the good fortune of finding treasure in the sea.

For any number of years I heard that Sanibel Island, Florida is where people go to find seashells. After the first ten minutes on the beach, I saw for myself that the reputation was well earned, and after three days and literally hundreds of shells later, I see the appeal.

There is something about a seashell—something beautiful, something quite magical. Perhaps the beauty is in the symmetry or the coloring, but I suspect that most of the appeal—especially on Sanibel where hundreds of shell-seekers compete—is wrapped somehow in finding a treasure that everyone somehow missed.  Life is timing, and reaching to retrieve a seashell is good fortunate that seems never to grow old.

After a few hours at the Seashell Museum on Sanibel I knew more about shells than I had managed to learn in the previous six decades. Back on the beach, I found it truly exciting to apply my new knowledge, and especially so to wade through the shallow water covering the sandbars where the living examples of my recent education are found. Here’s the thing: finding a fully formed shell washed up on the shore almost always means that the creature has died. Its shell becomes victim to the surf and, of course, the very good fortune of some “sheller” lucky enough to find it first. Walking slowly, peering through a foot or two of fairly clear water almost always results in opportunities to see the organisms before they become souvenirs or food of the scavenging seagulls; before either of those though many of the vacant shells become homes to the multitude of hermit crabs that live in the shallow water.

So it was one beautiful March day. I walked slowly along, head down, occasionally reaching to the sandy bottom to retrieve the things I found: a sea star or two, a few sea urchins, and dozens of highly irritated hermit crabs; but mostly what I found were shells including beautiful creatures called Florida Fighting Conchs. Rather small when fully grown, Florida Fighting Conchs are prevalent on Sanibel. At that distance from the shore, more things were alive than not, but not all—the souvenirs waiting to wash up on shore during the next high tide.

As I stood up after finding a beautiful, but empty, Florida Fighting Conch shell, I heard a voice ask, “Are you a pirate?” I looked up.

From her perch upon her father’s shoulders, I could see a five-year-old girl awaiting my answer. To be honest, she caught me off-guard. In the split second I was given to decide my response, I couldn’t determine if it was to my advantage to lie, so I said, “No. I’m not a pirate.”

“Well,” she said, “you look like a pirate.”

We stood face-to-face-to-face, with her father smiling broadly. Having no recourse but to amend my answer I said, “Aaaarrrgh, Matey!” in my best Edward Teach voice.

She did not skip a beat. “Aaaarrrgh!” she replied leaning closer to make her point, but making it much easier for me to reach up to her ear using the very same time-tested, pirate-approved, five-year-old pleasing gag I have used many, many times.

“Aaaarrrgh, Matey, what do ye have livin’ behind yer ear?” I asked in my Blackbeard voice, and just as many unsuspecting victims of my deception have done in the past, she reached up in hopes of answering the question, in this case just in time to find the conch shell I “found” there. She smiled at her newly discovered treasure as she took it from me.

“Thank you,” her father said, but I think he knew as we parted ways that his little girl wasn’t the only one who found treasure just then. Before long I happened upon a huge conch that wasn’t nearly as happy to be pried from the hold it enjoyed deep in the sand. By the time I got back to my newest friend, she could see the shell I had returned to show her.

“My name is Jay. What’s your name?” I asked.

“Isabella,” she told me, and her father, David, introduced himself. “Thank you for your kindness,” he said. “It’s funny,” he continued, “she wanted to know if you are a pirate.” He told me that she had noticed me from a distance and began steering him in my direction. Isabella and I agreed that since the enormous conch was alive we should dig a hole and replace him in the water, which we did.

Although we parted ways yet again, our time together wasn’t over as before long I heard her calling to me, “Jay! Jay!” When I made it back to her I could see her bravely holding a living sand dollar. “Jay,” she said. “I found this for you.”

Together we examined both sides of the sand dollar. We counted the openings and noted the various features we saw. When I told her that the sand dollar was still alive, she agreed that it must be returned to the water. Once again we dug a small depression and laid it carefully in the hole.

Just like seashells, there’s something about a child—something beautiful, something quite magical, especially one holding a seashell, comforted by the knowledge that pirates do exist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df1E4NJu7ng