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Staring at the ocean this morning, I realized how little I know about what’s undersea amid the disgust and horror. My curiosity got me wondering what it would be like to walk into the surf and keep walking to see what catastrophes, old disgusting relics, and sea monsters I might encounter.
So I got into my scuba outfit – some people gazing watched in wonder, others indifferent – and strutted into the ocean, and kept going, underground, breathing through my tube which works like my sleep apnea machine.
It didn’t take long for me to make discoveries I never could have expected, all right there under the sea off my beach since babyhood.
There it was off to my right, a creepy-beyond-belief octopus the size of Kareem Abdul Jabaar but with many more non-linear curves and twists, all slimy and off-greenish, looking aimless and filled with nothing but venom and hate. Another one was right next to it making the two of them an octopi set.
What do octopi do undersea, I thought for a second, then stopped thinking about it because I realized I would never know and time was precious. This would be my only time doing this underwater trek and I may not come out alive. I needed to take in the sights and then get the hell out before something ominous presented itself and my life situation veered into the ocean floor.
So I moved on a few steps further. Again off to the right I saw a shipwreck corroded and rusty, decorated with shiny, sharp, moldy barnacles and soggy and randomly pimpled puke-green seaweed.
Much more pleasing to the eye, just beyond the shipwreck, was a floating around Ariel the Mermaid in her teal tight leotards and purpose to get up and double fin that stretched to the end of the Earth. She winked at me and I winked back.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Hanging on Deauville Beach because I read your blog yesterday saying it’s the best beach in the world and wanted to swim over here to take in the experience,” he said. “You know the world of undersea creatures is really starting to resonate with the Sammy Sportface Baby Boomer Brotherhood Blog. I know several great white sharks, whales, and horseshoe crabs that read your stuff every morning before going out to kill other sea creatures for breakfast.”
“How many followers do I have down here?” I ask.
“I’d guess 5 or 10 but it’s bound to get bigger especially if you keep writing about the beach and ocean…this is a big market opportunity for just about any kind of business,” she said. “And the blog you’re no doubt going to write about what’s underneath Deauville’s waters because you write about everything you do and everywhere you go, will definitely go viral because sea creatures like to read about themselves.”
It’s obvious but worth emphasizing. I didn’t expect to be having a conversation with a mermaid about my blog followers undersea, but this goes to show you how unpredictable and filled with surprises the sea world is if we would only go down there and explore it and talk to some creatures.
“Share those blogs, Arielle,” I said. “I got to get the numbers up undersea because on land I struggle to get any new followers. Land creatures don’t seem to resonate with what I’m writing but maybe my real target market is actually the undersea demographic.”
Although enjoying my back and forth with a famous mermaid I once met in Disney World, I moved on slightly concerned with how long I could breathe through a tube before that luck would run out but determined to keep going like those explorers who migrated West on foot across the United States and when they saw the Rocky Mountains started climbing anyway even though that was dicey at best.
Feeling like Christopher Columbus, I walked on. Something lemon yellow entered my sight. As I got closer I realized it was a yellow submarine, the one the Beatles sang about all of us – everyone on Earth — living in back when they were big. The song was a preposterous notion and seeing it off Deauville was also.
I started wondering: Did Ringo sing that one or Paul? I remembered it was Ringo. Not their best song – a poor song actually — but that was an argument for another day with Spars. This was a day to channel Jacques Cousteau.
The yellow submarine was the exact same color as the yellow tuxedo I wore to my high school junior prom and danced in so much I got sweaty which also was the night my date, who was my girlfriend, realized we weren’t meant for each other.
Peering through the windows I wasn’t surprised at whom I saw; in fact, I would have bet on it: Spars, Guma, McCartney, and Ringo playing, of course, “We All Live in A Yellow Submarine.”
“Spars,” I said. “It’s Sportface. How come you and Guma always play Beatles songs?”
“That’s on Guma,” he said. “He thinks he’s McCartney. I want to write my own new songs but he’s content playing Beatles songs even in a yellow submarine underwater. I’m just here because I want to be around Paul.”
Done with Spars and the Beatles, I moved on hoping to see sharks 20 times my size with butcher knife teeth all mangled together like twisted metal you find at an old beat-up car pile-up landfill.
My wish granted, I came upon bad-ass Bruce, also well known as “Jaws,” who in that movie devoured Chrissie Watkins, Alex Kintner, Morris Cater, Ben Gardner, Matt Hooper, and Quint.
You remember watching Bruce severing Quint’s stomach with his machete teeth as the mad seaman got his leg entangled in a rope of a harpoon that had hit Bruce. Quint’s blood gushed into the ocean and we all screamed. The man was eaten by a shark. Awesome.
Remarkably, there was Quint still bleeding, his stomach gashed open, screaming still at Jaws, the great white he became obsessed to find and kill but, alas, failed more colossally than any undersea maniac fisherman ever has.
“You never should have gotten your leg caught in the harpoon rope,” I said to Quint.
“Doesn’t matter now,” Quint said. “That movie was a hit 40 years ago and people are still afraid to go in the ocean and I’ve been making royalties ever since. Bruce bit me badly but I’m still here. We’re now Hollywood royalty.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “Bruce got all the royalties for that movie. You weren’t the star. He was.”
Bored with the great white shark and Quint being his usual self-centered and shallow self, I decided I had seen enough. Coming out of the ocean, I saw a gaggle of news reporters who had rushed to the beach to cover the story of what I had found underwater.
“Get out of my way,” I said. “I need some boardwalk fries and a funnel cake. All the exploring I’ve been doing this morning has made me as hungry as Jaws.”
“What did you see down there?” one reporter shouted as I scurried away.
“Not much,” I said. “But I found out a lot of sea creatures are reading Sammy Sportface blogs, and I think I’ve found the market that has been eluding me for so long.”
Author Profile
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Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger, galvanizes, inspires, and amuses The Baby Boomer Brotherhood. And you can learn about his vision and join this group's Facebook page here:
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