An encounter at the post office

"What's your secret?"

That's what the little Hawaiian lady asked me at the post office. I looked at her blankly.

"What?"

"What's your secret?"

I looked at her closely, trying to figure out what she could possibly be talking about. She was about five feet tall, with a short fringe of wispy mouse-colored hair and a face like a freckled walnut. She took on a jaunty stance, leaning on one elbow at the table where I was sorting through my mail. Her flowered red muumuu was a splash of color in the drab post office lobby.

"You have such calm eyes. You must get a lot of rest at night."

"Um...sometimes." I thought about my eyes. They definitely did not feel calm or rested.

And that's how it started. For the next 30 minutes, the old Hawaiian lady (for lack of a name, I will call her Auntie) wove a fantastic tale, in chapter after chapter, while I stood there, completely at a loss as to how to extricate myself.

"Can science explain what I have seen, three times in my life? The first time when I was eight years old. I was in bed and I saw a milky white shape, with arms that beckoned to me. I was so afraid, but I couldn't speak. Then the legs disappeared. Then the hips disappeared. Then the chest. Then all that was left was the head, a white ball, that floated up to the ceiling where there were many other white balls, floating around. And then they were gone.

"...and then..." These were the words that I learned would signal the start of the next chapter.

"And then...the next time I was a teenager. I was in the kitchen with my father, washing the dishes. I looked out the window and I saw a white shape and it was beckoning to me. I told my father to quick come and look, but then it was gone.

"And then...the next time, was just after I was married. We didn't have indoor plumbing then. I got up to go outside to the outhouse and I saw a white shape, beckoning. I was so scared. I ran back inside and my husband said, 'Why are you afraid? You've been going outside by yourself for months!'

"And then...after that, I was never afraid of anything again. Because I knew there was something else out there."

I don't remember what I said at this point. I shuffled my mail. People came and went.

"I've been in 18 car accidents," she added.

"I was driving from Lahaina one day and a devil wind blew down the mountain, just as I was about to drive into the tunnel. It lifted my car right off the road...one...two...three times it lifted me up. On the last time, my car slammed back down and the police came. I heard them talking...'is she okay?' I thought, 'Why are they saying that? Can't they see I'm alive?' Then two nuns came to my car. They said, 'It's a miracle!' I thought, 'What is the miracle?' And then I saw my car. The windshield was smashed. The front and back were pushed in like an accordian. I went to the hospital and I was unconscious for three days. When I woke up, someone showed me a picture of myself that was taken right after the accident. My face was black. My neck was black. My hands were black. I looked like a corpse."

I wondered if I was going to hear about the other 17 car accidents and I started to get worried. I took Auntie by the elbow and walked towards the door.

"Those are amazing stories," I told her.

She nodded. "My son told me I should write a book. But who would read it?"

"I would," I said.

She smiled and waved and got into her car. It was an SUV. She couldn't possibly have been tall enough to see over the steering wheel. It would have taken a miracle.

Stand up, sit down, fight, fight, fight

Every once in a while, a friend talks me into trying some new activity that they are convinced is the most fun ever. This accounts for my attempts at water skiing, snowboarding, windsurfing, scuba diving, inline roller skating, and jumping off the high diving board at the community pool. In spite of the good intentions of my friends, and their valiant but futile attempts to instruct me, I have been a spectacular failure at every one of these. But it's only after they have actually seen me fall, sink, face-plant, crash, tumble, sputter, or keel over while standing perfectly still, do they admit that I must have some genetic deficiency that makes me better suited for sitting under a beach umbrella with a beer. And yet, thanks to human ingenuity, there always seems to be some new athletic challenge that just might turn out to be my thing. Last weekend, that challenge was stand up paddling.

For those who are not familiar with this activity, stand up paddling involves a really big surfboard, a really long paddle, and for most people, really flat water. You put the board in the water, you stand on the board, and you propel yourself around with a sweeping stroke of the paddle. Real surfers don't think much of stand up paddlers. I heard one refer to them derogatorily as beach janitors because of their slow, sweeping motions with the paddles. Real surfers hate it when they're riding a wave and a beach janitor sweeps by right in front of them. So mostly real surfers and stand up paddlers stake out different territories on the ocean.

 Stand up paddling - fun for the whole family!

In Maui, you can go to almost any beach on the south or west sides and see all kinds of people, of all different abilities, young and old, cruising around on their stand up boards. According to a recent article about stand up paddling in Connecticut, of all places, "anyone can stand up on the board and paddle on the ocean." I beg to differ.

My friend let me try stand up paddling on her new, lightweight board, which was probably a mistake (I saw her checking it out for damage after I returned it to her). It took me approximately 10 seconds to fall off for the first time. That pretty much established the pattern for the rest of my relationship with the board. There is something misleading about the term "flat water." Water is not flat. I will put money on that. Several times, as I was heaving myself back onto the board after cartwheeling into the ocean, some well meaning soul, a 90-year old geriatric or a kid with one leg, would paddle by and offer me words of encouragement. "Everyone falls off the first time!" "Use the paddle to help you balance!" "Don't look at the board, look at the horizon!" I felt sorry for them. They had no idea who they were dealing with.

I looked like this for about 30 seconds, max.

All the while I was trying to give it a go, my friend was paddling slowly around me, telling me how well I was doing, and actually keeping a straight face while she said this. I finally called it quits when my legs started to shake and a fair amount of the ocean had gone up my nose. By this time I had drifted almost out of sight of the place I had started and the only way I could get back was to paddle laboriously from a kneeling position, which made paddling feel like I was waving a flag pole.

And so I add another attempt to my scrapbook of (to borrow from David Foster Wallace) supposedly fun things I'll never do again. Well, maybe one more time. Just to be sure.