A story from the Shadow Elm Memoir.
People drinking and playing pool in the Immortal Elf would always go on about the Piedmont. They would have these long, drawn-out discussions about the Piedmont having the best sweet tea, southern hospitality, and tobacco. I always thought the tobacco thing was strange. I nodded, agreed, and said, “Oh yeah, yeah,” around them. I was perplexed by these talks about Piedmont.
It took me a very long time to understand that North Carolina is divided into three geographic areas: Mountain in the west, Piedmont in the middle, and Coastal Plain in the east. We lived in Charlotte, in a southern Piedmont county on the North Carolina and South Carolina state lines. These Charlotteans were proud of this. I wasn’t going to question their local pride, and who was I to question it? I was an outsider but they welcomed me into their village.
I will repeat again that North Carolina is a remarkable and strange state. I should’ve remained there, but that reason isn’t relevant here. I’ll talk about something trying to murder me later. Through exploring the Tarheel State, I realized that each region has fantastic things independent of each other. They combine like ingredients into a delicious sandwich to form something very special.
I observed this first in the middle and the western parts of the state, since I had been to the mountains several times while dating Rosie, the dancing will-of-the-wisp. The mountains are colossal, rigid, and distinguished. Where the Piedmont is a commercial hub of metropolitans and foothills. The beach was somewhere I visited much later.
It was on a Tuesday night when I learned how long the North Carolina coast is. I remember this because the quizmaster stumped my team at an Elf trivia night, which was always on Tuesdays. The answer is that North Carolina’s Atlantic Ocean coastline is 320 miles long. No one pulled that measurement from their noggins that night. We needed those trivia points too. I laugh because we need extra points anytime our dreaded team competed in the Elf’s trivia night.
I was a North Carolina resident for six to seven years before making it to the beach. The news outlet I worked for at the time sent me to a “journalism” conference at the Carolina Beach Hampton Inn. I remember this quick trip felt like a lavish one. Work let me rent a car because my old, unfaithful Honda wouldn’t make it. That hooptie barely made it from my apartment to the grocery store. The hotel room had a king-size bed and a 10th-floor balcony view of the vast blue ocean. This was luxurious living to me, but that wasn’t the cherry on the pie. The Atlantic Ocean was the extra vast greenish-blue and salty thing that elevated this trip to the cosmos.
This was the first time I had ever seen an ocean in person. Before this, I had only seen oceans in movies and pictures. I grew up totally landlocked with little water around. Until this point, the rivers and lakes around Charlotte were the largest bodies of water I’d ever seen. This experience was overly joyous, and my emotions were off the happy chart. I was struck with awe, standing on my hotel balcony in wonderment. I’ve been to all four, but you always remember your first one. I needed a closer look at this large expanse of salt water. I needed to see the sea.
A wooden boardwalk from the hotel over the dunes led the way to the beach. I stopped at the top of the steep stairs, took my shoes off, and walked down to the sand. My first few barefoot steps into the sand felt crazy. My feet just sunk into the soft ground. My leg muscles were working overtime to move me toward the ocean. The sand felt smooth on the bottom of my feet but mildly gritty on the side of my feet. I made a very lousy and humorous sandcastle with my bare hands. This could’ve been better if I had a bucket and shovel.
I eventually entered the ocean and stopped ankle-deep. Guess what, I can’t swim. The waves were powerful and loud. The water was freezing, which makes sense because the conference was off-season. This temperature made my time in the water short. The sand in this section of the beach was damp and clumpy from the water. The little pieces of seashell stuck to my feet and sparkled atop my feet. Then it started to rain. This weather wasn’t in the forecast. So, I dashed to the stairs, grabbed my shoes, and reentered the hotel before a downpour.
It rained for the next few hours and I was bored in my hotel room, so I wandered to the hotel bar around dinner time. I ordered some mozzarella sticks and a Busch Lite draft. There was no Reuben sandwich on the menu. I sipped my beer and smiled at the ocean through the vast glass windows. Except for the Atlantic Ocean, this conference had been dull. I needed some excitement. I needed something to do, so I asked the bartender if a basketball court was nearby.
Playing basketball is something I do to relieve my boredom. The bartender told me there was one a few miles away. Cool! And also, crap! My basketball is back in Charlotte in the trunk of my hooptie Honda. No worries. I can buy one and find the basketball court on the way to the store. The courts were empty on the first pass by, and then the heavy rainfall started again after leaving the store. It looked like shooting baskets wasn’t going to happen.
It was now dark, but I spotted it with my excellent night vision. Skrrrrt! I pressed the car brakes so hardcore and suddenly. No thoughts were apparently given. How I didn’t hydroplane was beyond me. The roads were covered with raging stormwater. No worries were apparently given. Then, I whipped my rental car in some spaces adjacent to the b-ball courts.
Someone was out there playing ball in the downpour. From the rental car, I didn’t know how impressive they were. I could hear them dribbling and splashing and the ball hitting the basket. They sounded like layups and three-pointers. They sounded like an opponent.
I ripped apart the basketball packaging and squeezed the ball to ensure it was game-ready—since I had just purchased it. I’m out of the car to approach the basketball courts. The rain is still dumping on us. My clothes and shoes are super-soaked, but that didn’t matter, I was in game mode.
There was actually one guy playing basketball by himself in the rain. There were two courts, and he’s running the farthest hoops away from me. He didn’t know I walked up, or he didn’t care that I’ve stepped up. I waited for a moment. My patience depletes for a good time to interrupt him. Then, after he rebounded a missed layup, I shouted, “Hey man, want a game?” The guy didn’t react with shock or alarm from my shouting but waved me over. It was bizarre.
I met him at the half-court line on the other concrete court. The rain was still coming down and pooling around the grounds. It’s almost flooding the court. Forget these conditions. I still want a game.
Wow, I thought! Standing beside my opponent at the half-court line. This guy was a colossus. He’s a tremendous dude. I guessed between 6′ 5″ and 6′ 7″. He didn’t seem so gigantic from the other side of the hoops. I’m above average in height, and this person monsters me. He had black long hair pulled back into a ponytail. I thought it was weird that the way it was pulled back and covered the tops of his ears. He was also wearing a green bandana tied around his neck. The last time someone wore some green accessories, they turned into a vampire. Remember me talking about the green tweed flat cap that Vince wore? Yeah.
We were standing face to face, like David and Goliath, if they were both holding basketballs. I asked him if he wanted to play a game of Twenty-One. He instantly shook his head from side to side, which was a definite HELL NO.
I jokingly countered with a game of HORSE. He liked this idea. He showed it by nodding his head back and forth, and then, solemnly, the giant said, “I prefer SEAHORSE.” It took me a second to process this. I was between a chuckle and playing the game, even though I’d be playing a one-versus-one match instead.
The sequence of missed shots and letters of the game went like this:
- I missed a layup and got a S
- I missed a free throw and got an E
- I missed a bank shot from the top of the key and got an A
- I missed a hook shot from the northeast corner of the court and got a H
- I missed the behind-the-back shot and got an O
- I missed an eye-closed floater layup and got a R
- He missed a granny shot and got a S
- I missed a three-pointer and got my second S
- I missed a half-court shot and got my second E
Yep, that is right. I got my ass handed to me. I had no authority to trash talk. It was horrendous. I demoralized myself.
“Great game,” my adversary told me. He then released one of the evilest laughs I had ever heard. He sounded like one of those maniacal cartoon villains with a big bushy mustache and an army of killer robots.
When we shook hands, the rainfall was about to end. His right hand interlocked with my left hand, crushing my hand. His grip was powerful and felt like fish scales. Then I examined his hands, which were in fact covered in fish scales with webbing between his fingers. I thought, “What in the supernatural hell is this?”
He recoiled his hand. Sometime during all this, there was a mishap with his green bandana. The bandana somehow unbound itself and fell to the ground, revealing what resembled fish gills on his neck. The delight from him trampling me in SEAHORSE turned into distress. He pushed me away and pressed his palms over his gills. Then he gazed upon me with his purple eyes. I stood there undisturbed even though I had just found out my adversary was some aquatic man creature.
“Do I not frighten you?” he asked me. I told him “no” and explained my “I don’t feel threatened by you” attitude was because I was friends with a vampire and dated a will-of-the-wisp. Which was enough explanation for him.
We continued our talk, became comfortable with each other, and broke the ice. He told me that his people were descended from the legendary island of Atlantis. They live and can breathe underwater and only come to the surface when it rains. Otherwise, they’d dry out, which would not be suitable for them. So, no wonder he wanted to play SEAHORSE instead of HORSE. The ocean is this guy’s thing.
I learned he’s an avid basketball fan, which is why he was shooting hoops in the rain. I laughed when he told me he was a Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman, and everything Chicago Bulls fan. But I really guffawed when he told me his name was Cee. Bahahahaha! He didn’t see the humor in that.
When the rain stopped, I knew he had to go. I demanded a rematch before he hurried away. He told me he was at these basketball courts every time it rained. Understood!
Well, I didn’t get my rematch for some time. The rest of this conference was dry. Most people wish for a sunny and dry beach day, whereas I want rainstorms. I went to this same conference a second time, but we didn’t meet again until my third “journalism” conference. I got my rainstorm. I had to skip several morning sessions and presentations, but Cee was at the courts.
I waited until he rebounded a layup like before to yell, “Hey man, want a game?” I’m back for my second game of SEAHORSE. He launched a ball at me and said, “Didn’t you learn your lesson the first time?”
How did the rematch go? Well, I didn’t win….again. I’m still 0-2 in SEAHORSE against C-E-E from the S-E-A. These homonyms are still hilarious all this time later.
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