A pile. Of crap.

The other day, I was hangin’ out down at Baby Beach.

Baby Beach has the official name of Hendricks Head, but we have called it Baby Beach since we first came to this area, because it is little. Like…. a baby.

Sort of makes me wonder why we didn’t call it something else little-ish. Like ‘Kitten Beach’ or ‘Pea Beach’ or ‘Amoeba Beach’ (probably the last one got left off the idea chart due to the Nearly Perfect Husband’s tendency to writhe and assume the fetal position while watching the show, ‘Monsters Inside Me’).

But ‘Baby Beach’ stuck and we’ve called it that ever since.

So I was down at Baby Beach and shooting the lighthouse and the sailboats and other things that I tend to shoot down there.

Camera.

With my camera.

Jiminy Cricket.

And, anyway, I saw this really cool pile of driftwood and lobster buoys and rope and stuff and it looked like someone tried to tie it up and organize it and it looked almost sculptural… so I turned away from the sparkling water and went over to the sculptural thingie and I hear a voice.

Nope! This time is was not in my head. It was in real life (and was I relieved).

A burly man about my age, with a little gray on his sideburns (which was a little unlike me, as I pay big bucks not to have gray on my sideburns) and with a lovely Maine accent asked me why I was taking a picture of the sculptural thing (he called it ‘that’, as in “Why are you taking a picture of that?”

I said that I thought that was really cool.

He said most people who visit ‘he-ah’ tend to take pictures of the wat-ah and the light house ‘ovah they-ah’.

I said I had a house here (though my empath-y-ness made it really, really difficult not to pronounce it ‘he-ah’), and really love taking photos of the lighthouse, but this sculptural thingie was calling to me today. And I pointed at it to show him that it had lobster buoys and stuff.

And he seemed to be surprised that we had a house he-ah. And I was rather proud of the fact that I seemed far more esteemed in his eyes because of this.

But then he told me that, if I had a house up he-ah and spent a lot of time up he-ah, then I should be able to tell that what I was taking pictures of was just “a pile of crap.”

And I was so stunned and so appreciative of his complete and utter candor that I burst out laughing so loudly that people walking by and toward Baby Beach turned their heads to see what was so funny.

And the man talking to me just smiled.

He’d made his point.

Maine-style.

He told me to have a good day as he turned to go. And he tossed in a ‘de-ah’ for good measure (I get called de-ah by people much younger and much older than me, so I don’t cringe the way I do with ma’am (though it’s probably the same thing). ‘De-ah’ makes me light up. Strange but true.

But as he walked away, slowly and in no hurry, I felt a little like he’d had the better part of the comic tit for tat.

As a matter of fact, really he’d only lobbed the comedic ‘tit’ side of that equation, as I had not ‘tatted’ at all.

So I called out to him and said, “It might be crap, but it’s Maine crap!”

There. Done. Perfect.

Until, without skipping a beat, he said, nicely and slowly and Maine-ly, “Well, then. I guess you’ve got yourself a souven-ee-ah!”

And he smiled, and turned, and kept right on goin’.

Game.

Set.

Match.

And I was left with my pile of crap.

Maine crap.

But still.

Crap.

Thanks for readin’.

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