I Love Shelter Island

The Best Things in Life are Still Free

Last week, the Shelter Island Reporter ran a questionnaire: “What does Shelter Island lack that would make it a perfect place to live?” Great question, and the answers reveal more about the ‘ anweree’ than the actual subject.

“Im thinking a 7-Eleven,” a young man was quoted. I can certainly sympathize. I was once a teenager stranded on the rock, as were my two children many years later. I can see the logic in wanting a 7-Eleven, Greenport has one, so does Sag Harbor, and yet we are left bereft of Slurpees and cigarette butt strewn parking lots. As anyone who’s ever lived off Island can tell you, the parking lot of a 7-Eleven is a Mecca for tweens to gather. The essentials of their lives are compiled there; junk food, cell signal and peers with whom to ponder the night’s coming mischief. Shelter Island is the only place I know of where the kids hang out at school on the weekends, to the rest of America that constitutes an alternate dimension.

We have something better than 7-Eleven, we have Fedi’s. Fedi’s is quite possibly the best deli from here to Manhattan but sans that special blend of dodgy-dingy florescent lighting that makes a 7-Eleven so alluring. I challenge the youth to expect more from their weekend excursions. Think not what the rock can do for you, but what you can do for the rock. In other words, google a “living social” or “groupon”, tweet your fellow teens and tweens and take a charter bus to halfway decent destination. Your parents can satellite stalk you from a lounge chair at Sunset Beach and you can make your parental chaperone (or human sacrifice) walk ten steps behind you, and not talk to anyone, lest they embarass you.

Another suggestion was for more jobs. Shelter Island could use a small movie theater. Three screens is all it would take to appease three generations of bored “rockers”. While providing entertainment to the masses, it would provide job opportunities and a suitable parking lot paradise. Since Shelter Island doesn’t allow any chains, the theater would be our own. Impeccably decorated by local island women. We could venture beyond stale popcorn an have special concessions from Fedi’s and Primo Pizza. Evening shows could be dinner theater quality with clams and on the half and white wine for the adult sections. An acrylic walled smoking enclosure for the smokers. The chairs would be plush recliners, the carpet persian, and the parking valet. But the best of all would be a secret room the men could access from men’s lounge. Boys always love a secret hideout from the girls, no matter what their age. This way they can evade chic flix by excusing themselves to the men’s lounge and dipping into their secret hide out for the duration. Cognac, cigars and CNN Sports run while their wives and girlfriends watch the latest romantic comedy. I’m telling you, a theatre like this would so enrich the Island that we’d need to move the whole Island farther out to sea to discourage off-Islanders from coming just to be able to really enrich movie watching again.

High School Sucks

"I Learned the Truth at Seventeen..."

First off, congratulations to Kelsey McGayhey, whose basketball jersey is being retired, for her fantastic feat of scoring more than 1000 points in her high school basketball career. Kelsey’s mother, Patty is my best gal pal. Since I make Patty laugh, and that keeps her happy, which insures she makes meals and takes care of Kelsey, I figure I can take credit for at least five of those basketball points. I don’t want to make a big deal, I don’t expect a parade or anything, but without those five points, Kelsey would only have 995 points...no need to thank me Kelsey, it was my pleasure.

Of course, it’s easy for me to be happy about high school sports stars now, but when I was in high school, I hated them. They were so coordinated and moved so fast, they were always picked first. I was always picked last. Even when I was in shape, I wasn’t in shape. I never excelled, or even hit mediocre in any sport, unless you count dodgeball - I was good at dodging, but that was it. I was in the brainiac group. I couldn’t compete with my feet, but I could gain with my brain.

I think it was Eleanor Parker who said, “Live as long as you like, the first twenty years are the longest half of your life.” I find that to be so true. The most painful things ever said to us are said by other students in high school. Being branded a freak, or some other moniker that served to separate and alienate you from your peers is a painful memory your entire life. Time gives it perspective, but it only takes a moment of thought to remember the pain. I recall teachers always reminding us, as I’m sure they do today, that we shouldn’t give too much import to other people’s opinions, it’s our own opinions that count. But speaking as an ugly duckling, emotional bullying is a tough experience to survive with dignity and I doubt it has changed.

What we can’t know in high school is that, it really does all come to a sudden and abrupt end at graduation. As soon as we’re out of school, we could care less what some former popular girl said about us.

My sweetest high school revenge was about a year after graduation, I ran into her, “the most cool girl”, in the class. She was a terrible emotional bully and had done a real job on my selt esteem. I was home on leave from the Army. I had a job I loved. I was stationed in Denver and having the time of my life. She was working in a coffee shop and I was her customer. She was pregnant, not married- which was a big deal at the time - and looked exhausted. We recognized each other and even though I had sworn I’d beat her to a pulp if I ever saw her again, my anger turned to pity in flash. A look passed between us and I could tell she felt embarassed to be serving me when she knew what a monster she had been. My future was as bright as her future was dull and we both knew it. There was no shortage of boyfriends in the Army, even for an ugly duckling, I had money now, I was having fun and looking forward to the future.

My tab was about $3.57 for a coffee and bagel, I left her a five dollar tip, just to rub it in. I knew it would humiliate her to feel grateful for a generous tip from me. Now, as a mature adult, I realize how unkind that was. If I could go back in time today, I’d like to think that I would have said something nice to her and left an appropriate tip. Yes, I’d like to think that. But I know damn good and well that if I could do it all over, I’d have left that slut a ten dollar tip.

Nature or Nurture?

The debate has gone on for years and still continues. Are we more shaped by our DNA or our environment? I always believed it was most likely a 50-50 combination of both. But after yesterday, I’m not so sure. Yesterday, my daughter, Chenoa (Iroquois for White Dove), took her daughter, Audriana (Olde English synonym for Kali the Destroyer) to Wal-Mart. Among the purchases, Chenoa got Audriana a new backpack.

I affectionately call Audriana, the Thief of Bagdad, because she’s always grabbing something and running away with it like it’s a bag of money. If you’re in the bathroom, she runs off with the toilet paper. If you’re dressing, she grabs a shoe and bolts to the other end of the house. She’s been doing this snatch and grab thing since she discovered her hands at the ends of her arms. As an infant, you couldn’t wear any jewelry near her because she could yank off a necklace or rip out earrings faster than you could imagine.

It made me wonder; there’s developmental markers that science uses to measure whether or not a child is developing normally; first words by age 12 months, first steps by 14 months, et. al.. So, do you think there’s developmental markers for future lawbreakers? First snatch and grab; 6 months. First grab and crawl; 9 months. First break in to Grandmother’s jewelry box; 12 months. First undetected snatch and grab; 14 months.

Audri’s become particularly adept at the undetected snatch and grab. At first it bothered me a lot. But now I know, if something’s missing from a drawer, or a handbag, or locked safe, there’s a good chance I didn’t misplace it and lose it due to memory loss from advancing age. It’s just as likely that Light Fingered Louie got to it and I will eventually find it in her stash places behind the couch or under the TV, behind the VCR.

So, as I mentioned earlier, my daughter bought Audri a new backpack. Audri chose it herself by yanking it off the shelf and shrieking when her mother tried to take it from her. That’s how Audri makes a lot of her purchase selections. It’s a little primitive right now, but I anticipate that when she’s older, she’ll use the same technique with her boyfriends but the shrieking will be replaced with smoldering looks that promise and never deliver.

As I was admiring the new backpack, I unzipped it. There was a knit headband inside with the price tag still on it. I looked at my daughter and she said, “Oh my God, I didn’t buy that! She must have grabbed it and put it in there!”

Yes, she did. She did it five times. Five new, tags on, very nice knit headbands, all neatly secured in her new backpack. My daughter was horrified. “No sense in trying to return them,” I said, “who’s going to believe the old, my kid put it in her backpack unbeknown to me story?”

I say, let’s look at the bright side, in the predicted post apocolyptic world, she will be the girl to know...