The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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On my afternoon walk yesterday around the Head I ran into a couple doing the same thing, something you might consider ordinary except for the fact that nobody walks the Head.  In all my years on the South End I’ve rarely run into anyone down that southernmost stretch of beach.  From Wilkes-Garry on the western side to Tyee Beach on the eastern, there’s an uninhabited section of Camano that runs about 5 or 6 miles without a house or a shack or even an artist studio.  Pristine.  With views of the Olympics, Hat Island, Mt. Rainier, the south end of Whidbey, the Cascades and finally Mt. Baker.  All to yourself.  It is a place so remote the carcasses of dead whales stinking up the waterfront of Everett are towed here, presumably where the stench of rotting blubber won’t bother anyone.

But yesterday I run into two folks.  Nice couple, live in a house in Wilkes-Garry I passed on my way beyond civilization so naturally we made a little conversation, moved beyond the weather, talked about this and that, but finally got to some palaver about exercise, diet, clean living, good health.  My newfound buddy told me he was 69, probably, he said, a little older than me, but hey, he didn’t drink or smoke, he ate a healthy diet and look, he was the picture of health.  I mumbled something or other about how a regimen like that probably helped keep him the Adonis he was and his wife smiled beatifically.

Course, that just opened the door to some health remedy he was promoting, hell if I listened close, but something to do with a miracle artery roto-rooting without medical procedures, clean out your arteries and plenty of other corollary benefits, mostly inducing me to consider escape options.  When he got to the part about how he kept himself in shape with clean living, which he defined now as a life without sin, sin being a disease and a sickness unto itself, I had trouble resisting the urge to mention that my own recipe for a long and prosperous life kind of included drinking and drugs and probably sin too, a prescription that obviously worked slightly better than his judging by my advanced years and the fact that he’d asked how far it was to Tyee, meaning he’d never walked that far, just a Stroller, apparently, whereas I obviously walked that far.  And oh, by the way, I said,  I’m a few years older than you, just look a lot younger….

I finally tore myself away from any further potential panaceas, bid them a good day and a good walk in the sun, then sauntered on home.  I guess we’re all looking for cures and remedies.  I mean, I guess if you think you found the news you must want to share it.  So to that end, any of you reading this and feeling a little under the weather, maybe dial back on your sinning a bit.  You’ll feel better in no time….

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