Mermaid Jim used to live south of me, the closest person to the island\u2019s Head, its southernmost inhabitant. I only encountered him infrequently and so he never remembered meeting before which meant I heard his stories numerous times. Invariably he would recount his mermaid story, and invariably I\u2019d wait to find discrepancies from the previous tellings.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was scuba diving in the Bahamas,\u201d he\u2019d start in, apropos of nothing in our conversation and only moments from new introductions, how do ya do\u2019s, where ya live? \u201cI was down maybe 30 feet off the reef when she swam right up to me, talked to me like I\u2019m talking to you, bubbles coming out of her mouth while she held steady with her tail. Her tail, man, her tail!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMermaid?\u201d I\u2019d say after hearing the story the first time. \u201cRight,\u201d Jim would say, grateful I wasn\u2019t rolling my eyes or calling 911 for psychiatric help.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw her the next day and the next, every day I dove down there.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhaddaya talk about?\u201dI\u2019d ask. \u201cNothing much,\u201d he\u2019d always respond.<\/p>\n
I guess if I met a mermaid, I\u2019d have some questions and maybe she would too, but Jim apparently didn\u2019t and his sea princess was similarly uncurious. It made his mermaid story short and sweet but not particularly interesting. Still, he never embellished it. Never altered it. He met a mermaid, they talked, he went home. Simple facts. Extraordinary encounter. Worth telling everyone he met about it — mermaids exist, he\u2019s seen one, he\u2019s even talked to one.<\/p>\n
Once I asked him if he thought she had a family, if maybe there was a whole undersea city of mermen and mermaids, if they had a watery civilization, if \u2026.
\n\u201cHow would I know?\u201d Jim answered, annoyed that his one mermaid wasn\u2019t plenty as it obviously was for him. \u201cI met a mermaid,\u201d he said, \u201cand she talked to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Developers built four houses near Jim\u2019s place maybe 10 years ago where there hadn\u2019t been anyone for half a mile either direction. Jim told me, last encounter we had, he\u2019d be leaving for over the mountains, maybe Mazama, where there would be less neighbors to bother him. I nearly asked why he wasn\u2019t headed back toward water, maybe be reunited with his mermaid, but I didn\u2019t. \u00a0 I figure in a way he\u2019s taking her with him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mermaid Jim used to live south of me, the closest person to the island\u2019s Head, its southernmost inhabitant. I only encountered him infrequently and so he never remembered meeting before which meant I heard his stories numerous times. Invariably he would recount his mermaid story, and invariably I\u2019d wait to find discrepancies from the previous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[6853,6852,6851],"class_list":["post-18289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings","tag-island-fantasies","tag-living-on-the-half-shell","tag-mermaids-in-mazama"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18289"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18290,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18289\/revisions\/18290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}