My wife Anne and I spent another holiday in Florida and came away with more pleasant memories.
Take Seniors Day on Anna Maria Island for instance.
And bear in mind the average age of those holidaying in Florida is 120 and rising, thus Anne and I often get called the 'kids' since we are still short of our 70s.
So we took in the annual Seniors Day most particularly for the races. Not horse racing nor even the ever popular dog races, but rather the wheelchair and walker races.
Talk about action.
The course is 100 yards and the starting gun was fired right on the dot of noon. Sadly, we were not able to see the finish since we had to leave by 2 pm but were still amazed at the overall efforts of contestants to navigate the ever-shifting, icing sugar-like sands.
Had we been able to stay past 2 o'clock it is guaranteed that we would have taken in some of the regular attractions such as the Best Trike on the Beach contest and the Wagon with the mostist. I have noted from past events Trikes and Wagons coloured Red have the greatest chance of winning an award.
Each year a new event is added to this list and this year was no exception...colouring books. I did get a chance to see, in the local paper, the picture that won a prize for 'best effort'. The artist had tried to paint the beautiful calm turquoise of the Gulf but due to high winds and flying sand her effort looked more like a sandbar in heavy seas....mostly brown.
The paper also mentioned an unfortunate event that occurred during the day's festivities. Apparently an electric golf-cart went out of control and ran down an elderly woman while she was watching the big race event. Fortunately she was not seriously injured since the soft sands absorbed most of her fall.
Police indicated that there was a shortage of eye witnesses given the fact that most on the beach that day came sans eye glasses and sans hearing aides. Organizers were quoted as saying future Senior Days would see a ban on golf-carts.
Friends of ours went to the day's high-lite or should I say 'evening high-lite'... the infamous Sock-Hop. You may recall that I wrote a blog about this dance last year and if you do you will remember that we came away somewhat shell-shocked.
In any event, I was still getting over the break in my eye socket caused by flying false teeth so respectfully declined their kind invitation to attend.
As my late aunt so often said, getting older is not for the faint of heart...and boy was she right.
As I see it...
'K.D. Galagher'
