Ok, so I told you that I have moved to a cottage near the beach. Well, I love the water, so this place is perfect for me. (That, and the fact that I now only have a 1-mile commute to my office – sorry, Bryan.) The other night I was bugging Bryan to come and play catch with me on the beach – I still have an old softball that was signed by my entire 6th grade team as well as the glove that I used in middle school, and Bryan has a glove that my dad gave him – so we were all set. Anyway, after a little convincing, Bryan agreed to come and play for no longer than 10 minutes.
We crossed the street and started walking along the sidewalk that would lead us to the beach with about 15 minutes of good daylight left on a gorgeous night. As we were hopping off of the sidewalk to get to the beach this attractive, very Southport-looking, blond woman came frantically running up to us with her little pug dog named Chester. (I won’t tell you her name simply due to privacy, but she was very friendly.)
Anyway, she came up to us asking, (yelling, really) “I lost my keys, could you please watch my dog? I was out on the jetty and I fell, and I lost my keys, could you just watch him for a minute I just need to go and look where I fell…” I’m sure she said more things but Bryan and I tried to settle her down, he watched the dog, and I helped her look out on the jetty. Basically, we were just looking down big cracks between huge boulders, and it was getting darker fast. We looked all around the jetty (as she repeatedly yelled at herself and kept reminding Chester that his mother was “an IDIOT,” the tide was really low, so we even walked down to the dirt ground and searched around. Bryan got the dog out on the jetty (which made him a little nervous, Chester, not Bryan) and started helping us look. The dog was barking, two little kids and their babysitter showed up and started helping, - it was an all-out search.
Long story short, we looked for at least 45 minutes and couldn’t see anything. It was pitch black and we finally had to admit defeat. As we had been searching we received more information from the woman. She had just moved to Southport from Manhattan, hadn’t owned a car in years, so she had gone that day to buy a car. She had picked it up a few hours earlier, and thought it would be nice to bring the dog to the beach, so she put all of the dealer keys and keyless entries in her pocket and took Chester for a walk. As they were walking he needed to relieve himself, so she was carrying his waste (which she kept referring to as doo-doo – it was KILLING me!), the keys, his leash, and her glasses. As they walked back on to the jetty, she slipped on one of the boulders. She fell in a crack on the right side, and he fell in a different crack on the left side. (This was the area we were looking in almost exclusively.)
At this point in the evening, we invited this woman to walk back with us to our house so she could use our phone, or so that we could give her a ride to her home. She was nervous about leaving her brand new car alone at the beach because it had her phone and her purse in it (with her ID, credit cards, etc.) so she walked back one more time to make sure it was really locked and there was no way in. We started to follow her and decided that rather than walking across the parking lot we would just cut across the beach. About halfway to her car Bryan looked down, and there were the keys! It was unbelievable. There was hugging, yelling, good karma wished upon us (100,000 pounds to be exact), and introductions made. We hadn’t even introduced ourselves until we had spent an hour with this woman and Chester. But we’ll never forget her, and I don’t think she’ll forget us either.
So, I didn’t get to play catch on the beach, but we had fun anyway, and made a new friend. Plus, with how well things have been going for Bryan and I (the new cottage, I have a bunch of shows, he’s been speaking a lot for Simply Smiles) if anyone needs any good karma I think we’ve had more than our fair share, and would be glad to pass some along. Have a great day.
