Stories Through The Ages

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PROCRASTINATION by Henry E. Peavler

If you are one of those people who thinks that procrastination is a bad thing, you shouldn’t be reading this. I am an expert at deferment and postponement, two of the prime ingredients in the art of procrastination. Who spouted that rubbish about not putting off until tomorrow what you can do today? What a crock, and I don’t mean of pickles. Always put things off until you are absolutely under the gun, behind the eight ball or, as the Aussie’s would say, “under the pump”. Don’t know why they say that, but they do.

I’ll give a prime example of how this practice will benefit you. I put off buying health insurance for 40 years, from when I was 20 to 60. I guess you can argue that when I turned 60 it wasn’t procrastination any more, it became a conscious strategy to wait until I was 64 and qualified for Medicare. But for 40 years I just kept putting it off, never sick a day in my life.

Come 64 I planned on getting a physical, let Uncle Sam pay for it. I was cocky about it.  Then the summer I turned 63 I got cancer. I told Doc that we would have to wait a year until I got Medicare because I didn’t want to pay the exorbitant costs of health care.

“Let Uncle Sam pay for it,” I laughed. We had a good chuckle over that until Doc said, “Oh, that’s a good one. I can wait, no problem, but you can’t.”  It took me a while to figure out what he meant by that.

So! You are probably asking, “How was that such a smart thing to do, Henry?”  I’ll tell you why.  If I would have gone ahead and bought health insurance like everyone advised me, I wouldn’t have lost all my money paying for Chemo and Radiation. Think of how I never would have had that experience, that valuable life lesson and that story to tell. I would have missed out on one of the signature moments of my very existence.

Now, how does that apply to writing? I’ll bet you’ve experienced the sensation of ‘I should sit down and write that short story for the writing contest’. But instead, you go have an Ice Cream Sundae or maybe go down to the Pub and hoist a few with some friends. Hell yeah, that’s more like it. You can write anytime, put it off, stall, delay, defer, no telling how many new life’s lessons you might learn while you’ve got a little buzz from a couple of pints of Fat Tire or maybe some shots of Jameson. You’ve got plenty of time to write and maybe you’ll meet a character that just jumps off the pages of that new novel you’ve been working on for 12 years.  

Don’t think about people like Carson McCullers who wrote The Heart is a Lonely Hunter when she was 20. Obviously she didn’t get the memo about putting things off.  She’s an anomaly, an exception to the rule.  I will admit that I’m starting to get a little nervous about finishing the Great American Novel I’ve been working on for 30 years. I call it the ‘The Next Greatest American Novel’, and it will cause a sensation in book clubs across America. I can smell the ink on the movie rights contract. But, like I said, I’m beginning to think that my time might be running a little short. I only have 80 pages written and it took me 30 years to do that. Maybe I’ll get up early in the morning and make a pot of coffee and work on it all day.

Wait, I just got a text from the golf course. The book will have wait until Monday.

Undertoad by Henry E. Peavler (Part 3)

This is serious now.  I need to think, relax and reason through solutions not day dreams.  How long have I been here, thirty minutes, forty, I’ll bet they’re mobilizing right now but I don’t see any one.  The hotels look like they’re moving and I’m trapped in one spot, is this really an ocean current or is it a rip current created by the hurricane in the Pacific?  The waves have been high all summer, the equatorial current is further out to sea but this is a living, breathing creature that holds me, suspended in its womb. 

What the hell difference does it make, I can’t get out of it, what am I supposed to do, swim against it, with it?  That seems to make sense, I tried to swim against it and got worn out but I feel fine now.  

“Senor!”

I am at peace with myself and this situation.  I resolve to…..

“Senor!” 

What was that?  Oh no this is it, God’s talking to me and he’s a Mexican. I need to leave word, but how, the secret to life has been revealed just when I’m going to die and no one will be the wiser; of course, I’m in Mexico and God is everything to all people, it stands to reason.

 “Senor, agarra la boya.”  Grab the buoy, what a strange thing to be saying, and then I see him, a vision that, I swear on the bible, is shrouded in a radiant light, like a sun beam.  He swims toward me, a Mazatlán Salvavida, ‘Un guardia que salva la vida’, a life guard.
            
He tossed the buoy toward me and backed off quickly in case I’m in a panic, which I’m not.  Ok, I did panic earlier but not now.  I want to talk to him, embrace him, and share my insights but I realize that he’s still worried about getting us to shore.  Suddenly I feel an amazing sense of relief that quickly turns to a kind of embarrassment. I feel like telling him I’m fine, that I was never in danger. But I clutch the life buoy like a child’s teddy bear ready to defend it to the death.  The buoy was attached by a tether strapped to his back with a harness of some kind, an umbilical cord stretched from the womb of the current to my mother savior. 

Time blurred a bit at this point.  I remember him telling me to kick hard then I waited as he surveyed the waves for the right moment to swim and we didn’t go straight to shore but diagonally across the breakers.  We reached the beach and I had difficulty standing plus I was out of breath; he offered his shoulder pantomiming that he would help me but I shook my head; I was elated and felt like flinging myself on the ground to kiss the sand. 

“You saved me,” I said in English.

“Si,” he replied simply, watching me, I realized later, to make certain I was ok, but I misinterpreted it to mean that he was expecting something. 

He told me, “La corriente es muy fuerte aquí. Debe tener cuidado y observar las banderas de advertencia.”
I looked to where he pointed and the red flag flew meaning don’t go swimming.  He began to leave, hurriedly jogging back to a 4-wheeler parked at the edge of the sand but there were so many things I wanted to share, feelings to express, yet all I could think of was to say again, “You saved me,” he smiled and nodded. 

“Cuál es tu nombre,” I yelled after him?

“Eddie,” he shouted back. 

I felt a tremendous loss as he departed, a sense that I owed him something. Not money, maybe a companionship or brotherhood, we were interconnected somehow. I wanted a remembrance of what happened; a picture together on the spot where he rescued me, something I could share with my family and friends back home.   I imagined the two of us gazing at the camera as though it were the evil current itself, my arm around him smiling in the face of near disaster; instead, he roared away searching for other stupid swimmers.

I slowly walked back to the palapa where I expected a hero’s welcome, plopped down on the chair, water dripping from my hair into my eyes.  I spotted my shoes where I had placed them, my wallet peeking out, everything as I’d left it a lifetime ago. 

“What happened?” Larry asked. “We saw you talking to the lifeguard.”

“Didn’t you see him save me?”

“No.  I just told Larry that I can’t see you in the water.”

“We didn’t know what you were doing,” Larry added.

“I thought that you sent him to find me, he saved my life, I was trapped in the undertow, the rip current.” 

They stared at me, confused.

“You just now missed me?  I’ve been gone forever, an eternity, my whole life flashed before my eyes.”

Diane shook her head and displayed her watch, “You went in the water at one o’clock and its one twelve now. You were barely gone ten minutes.” 

THE END