Beach typing

9/21/07

i'm listening to myself type on this keyboard and the sounds (just straight typing, when i'm not stuttering, slamming emphatically or typoing, an embarrassingly identifiable trait in my emails and gchats)
and the stops and starts, thoughtful pauses, and energetic determined unpunctuated sentences started to remind me of my grandmothers mah jong games at the beach with her leathery, chain smoking old beach friends. it sounds like this- pecking, unpredictable music.
she had a cabana at the beach and in the middle of the two rows she'd set up the table and these wizened jewish ladies (and one old funny guy named calvin, who used to tell me you knew you were fat when you could assertively grab two handfuls of stomach) would stagger over. because no one looks powerful walking in the sand, certainly not 70 year old women. they'd wordlessly set up and play, and most of the game was only interrupted when a grandchild would skip (again, not quite skip) up and ask for money for a hamburger. those were so fuckign good. cheap and charred, that smell is still magic.
they'd go till 4 or so and then we'd pack up, exhasuted and hyper and red and headachy and she'd drive us home. saturday nights she ate with our family, it was usually steak and fries.
bret and i didn't appreciate steak and fries at the time.
i didn't appreciate a lot of things at the time, i just realized.
i miss her, i loved her a lot. i wish she knew me now.
i don't think i put many typos in here but i'm not going to bother looking.