Like There Was No Tomorrow

The Gulf waters were being stirred

by a tropical storm in early June.

The top of the forty-foot tall

eucalyptus tree was streaming eastward.

This was my treesock,

alerting me to possible surf activity.

We lived four miles from the beach.

Abby posed no further threat.

So at sunrise,

with my Dewey Weber surfboard

stowed in the back of a 1960

pale blue four-door

Ford Falcon station wagon,

I headed for Big Hickory Pass

at the age of sweet sixteen.

I had never surfed before

an oncoming storm,

but Abby was losing strength
trekking across the Gulf

by the time she made landfall

fifty miles further north.

Hurricanes or tropical storms

had a way of drawing out

the Gulf coast surfers

like sugar with ants.

The sugar surf was limited

on the West Coast

so you surfed passionately

and almost uncontrollably,

always thinking

here today, gone tomorrow.

By late afternoon

I was mentally and physically depleted

to the point my spirit was willing,

but the body was completely paddled out.

On my last wave of the day,

I was hanging five

and decided to hang ten

causing Dewey to pearl immediately. 

I was thrown forward

while my surfboard

shot out of the water like a missile.

While quickly looking around for my board,  

Dewey came down nose first,

pegging me right in the forehead!

With a small gash and a growing lump

I decided to call it a day and head for home.

Along the way

I had fallen asleep at the wheel

and crossed the centerline,

clipped a mailbox, and

knocked the side mirror off the wagon

before swerving back into my lane!

Arriving home

I collapsed on my bed

and quickly fell asleep,

exhausted and totally out of it.

At the break of dawn

the top of the towering eucalyptus tree

was still leaning to the east

as Dewey and I made our way further south

along the windy coastline

in search for more sugar.

Though I surfed that day

like there was no tomorrow,

I didn’t want to repeat

the day before in risking

my life or others.

At the crack of dawn on day three

the treesock was faintly active.

I was crestfallen,

but grabbed up Dewey anyway

and off to the beach we went.

The waves had flatlined

during the night.

All the sugar had

dissolved into the calm,

and the ants had returned

to their mound,

except for one,

still searching for a morsel.

The knot on my forehead

reminded me 

that not all had subsided,

and Dewey and I returned home.

The missile,

the mailbox,

and the mirror

were mental keepsakes

of going stupid

during that sugar rush!

But how do you tell

the smarter than ants

to stay away or

to control themselves when

sugar is discovered

on another day?

The impulse is

to take whatever possible

until it is gone.

It is a primitive, powerful, and persuasive pull

to naturally go for the sugar

like there was no tomorrow.

As for me,

I’ve got this little scar on my head

to forever remind me that 

choice can turn a sugar rush sour

when passion is allowed to surge

like there was no tomorrow.