Back In the Day

I am reminded of a time in the 60s when my innocence was both a blessing and a curse.  It was a blessing because I did not think anything bad would ever happen to me and it was a curse because I did not think anything bad would ever happen to me.

In 1962, I was the mature age of 15 and not only did I feel invincible, but I thought both my parents were dumber than shit.

Early that summer, we were at the Outer Banks of North Carolina and a friend and I were out body surfing in the ocean after a terrible storm passed through.  The waves were a good 10-12 feet high and I remember were some of the best waves I had experienced in my entire lifetime up to that point.

My buddy and I body surfed for about 2 hours before we decided to get out of the water and take a break.  When we got on the beach, we did not recognize anything and decided to walk out to he beach road and see if we recognized anything there.  We did not.

We started walking to the north and after about 10 minutes of walking, a car going south slammed on its breaks and the driver rolled down the window.  An angry driver yelled out.  "You two get the hell into this car now!"  It was out fathers.  Apparently, the waves had taken us over 10 miles down the beach.

Needless to say, we were not permitted to get out into the water without supervision until we left.

A couple of weeks later, my parents, my brother and I boarded a cruise ship on our way to the Mediterranean, our final destination being Cairo, Egypt.

A solarium for teenagers was on the top deck and it was there that I met a group of other teenagers all of whom were accompanying their parents to foreign embassies.  We formed a quick bond and when we got to an Italian port, we all left the ship together to rent scooters.  We spent the entire day scooting around the city and when we dropped off our scooter and caught a taxi back to the cruise ship, the ship was not there.

There was a cruise ship representative on the pier waiting for us.  The ship went out to sea to ride out a potentially bad storm.  We were bussed to a location twenty miles away where the ship would temporarily dock and pick us up.

Needless to say, all our parents were pissed off at us...  but, we had no way of knowing that bad weather was approaching.  However, our parents disagreed and told us that we should have paid attention to the sky.

I was not restricted but every time we stopped at a port my parents warned me to pay attention.  To tell you the truth, I am not sure if I ever did.