shells

Invariably, spend long enough time at the beach and everybody starts picking up shells. You almost have to. when you start picking them up you pick up anything you find: shell fragment, pieces, etc. after a while you stop picking up fragments and start only picking up whole shells. Any whole shell you see you pick up. Even the shells that aren't particularly aesthetically pleasing, you pick them up because somehow, despite crashing on the shore and withstanding who knows what other kinds of punishment, it is still whole.

After picking up several whole, though somewhat ugly, shells, you start only picking up the pretty looking ones. The ones that have different color striations, no barnacles, clean edges. You pick up several of these and realize that your bag or pockets are now close to full, and in order to fix the new dilemma you dump out all the fragments and most of the ugly whole shells. You feel satisfied at your finds and start to walk home from the beach. You kick up something out in the hot, dry sand, the kind right in front of the dunes. You reach down and pick it up.

It's a shell, not particularly colorful, a little chipped around the edges, and perhaps it has a little barnacle growth on the underside. But this shell, out of all of the shells you've found, this one is your prize. All the others will go into a baggie and be forgotten several weeks from now, but this shell stays separate from the others. Why? because it was so far away from the others, hidden in the hot sand. Somehow it ended up farther than any of the other shells and was never stepped on by beach joggers or ran over by lifeguard trucks. When others look at your prize shell they may notice brighter, more colorful shells tucked away in the baggy, but yet you have this shell separated.

It is a little sad that you are the only one who knows and sees the true beauty of the shell, but perhaps it is better that way.

when I was a lad I was a little bit shy