It must be another sign of my unobstructed curmudgeonly decomposition that almost everyone whom I meet these days comes across to me as moderately odd. I say this with sizeable reservation for several reasons. I realize the assessment appears to sanction my own behaviour as less peculiar (which I am quite certain without investigation is not true). I acknowledge too that my upbringing from boarding school at St. Andrew’s College to law school at Dalhousie University was not without its perplexing flavours. And being a country lawyer in a small town of rural Ontario is not traditionally adjudged to be without character or distinctiveness.

Yet I continue to observe differences which were hitherto less conspicuous. It can hardly be said that I have only recently widened my social net. If for example one were to allege that the distinctiveness were an evolution reflective of having spent considerable time in the United States of America over the past ten years, I frankly hadn’t noticed any such modification until very recently. Nor – to be clear – is this our first time on Key Largo or on the entire Florida Keys for that matter, just in case anyone chose to point the finger at the popular bohemian nature here.

When we were young we all had standards by which to live and to conduct ourselves. We even wore uniforms, modifications of which I continued to wear throughout my career. There were familiar guide posts by which to conduct one’s perambulations. But now it appears that everyone I meet is, to be kind, of a singular nature. How it is that I have managed to maintain the narrow path of commonality I shall never reckon.  But I do at least know better than to make an exhibition of the oddity of others. Rather I stimulate myself to endure the manifestations; and, primarily in the interest of satisfying my curiosity, I exert what devious social skills I possess to encourage an enlargement upon the peculiarities that I perceive.  Very often there is gratifying knowledge which percolates from the unexpected sources. It requires a degree of refinement to enable the exemplification of these occasional rarities. The distinguishing details of life are not always axiomatic.

Today for example while lingering about the island pool to fulfill my customary accession to the radiance and water, I gabbed with a gentleman whom I approximate to be of an age with me and who proved to be beguiled by what I can only characterize as predominantly country music. While this is not a proclivity entirely unrecognizable among men and women twenty years or more younger, it did however constitute for me an unfamiliar bias. Of less judgemental persuasion was an account by another chap concerning hand-gliding. Now you have to admit that for the over-70 crowd that is an unusual ceremony to be undertaken.

I could go on. The woman who, every time I speak with her, exudes sweetness and light (a not entirely unattractive preoccupation yet one of limited endorsement). Or the chap who alludes to his on-going business enterprises while spending the entirety of his day, every day, dawdling by the pool smoking his cigar.  Again, a plausible production but somehow moderately doubtful.