Wasted on the Young

The odors that drift into my nose when I walk along the sand and broken shell that form the beach by the bay are mixtures of ecstacy and horror. They recall the sweet stench of adolescence and petroleum distillates and salt air that seemed somehow natural when I was a teen. The pelicans gliding inches above the water early in the morning and the sense of an intimate, private relationship with nature as the sun begins to lighten the sky with pink and orange and brilliant blue tints bring my youth into vivid focus.

I remember fishing and shrimping and sailing in those waters. I remember the delight of walking home, carying a stringer heavy with the huge flounder I caught the night before after an all-night fishing expedition on Oso Pier. And I recall the night that the speckled trout were so thick in the waters below that my friends and I each took home at least forty or fifty big ones. And I remember driving to Padre Island, when I was in my late teens, going miles down the utterly deserted beach to stake my claim to my private fishing area where I knew no one else would come. It was the desolation of the beach at daybreak and sunset that I craved.

Just a quick trip to my hometown made me homesick, thirty-six years later. I want to go home again. I missed out on so much because I was so young. Youth is wasted, wasted I tell you, on the young!