Four Heart hat seeks new head

Hello there,

I hope to be introducing myself to you as your new hat soon.  Here’s my story:

There were these people, a man and his wife, who traveled to Florida to visit their friends.  It’s not like they had not seen each other for years or anything like that- they actually live about an hour apart in Washington- but the visit was more about escaping the cold rain and the dismal early Spring weather for the more typical 80+ degree days and hot sunshine of south Florida on the Caribbean side.  The Florida folks had bought property down there for a winter hideaway.

So anyway, as they were strolling the white sand beaches of Florida that surround Sanibel Island looking for shells and such the one old guy, who has developed a habit of picking up garbage everywhere he goes (something about if everyone who went for a stroll on a beach or in a park took out one more piece of garbage than they generated during their stay, why, pretty soon we would run out of garbage, wouldn’t we?), rescued me from where I had landed, up on the high tide mark, where I was half-buried under the sand, with only my bill showing.  He thought I was just another piece of cast-off refuse, and threw me in the bag with the other bits of flotsam and jetsam uncovered by the wind and the waves.  It was only after he cleaned me up that he saw my potential, and decided to help me find a new owner, or re-unite with the last one.

If you look at a map of the currents in the Gulf of Mexico, you’ll see that the water comes in from the South between the Yucatan peninsula from which the Mayans and later the Aztecs once ruled the known world, and the west end of Cuba, which is so long it funnels the water back out into the Caribbean Sea by way of the west coast of Florida, where I was found.  That means I could have come from anywhere within that giant loop, if indeed I was not dropped by some careless kid right there on the beach, which I stipulate is probably the more likely scenario, but I prefer the mystifying romance of the grand idea to the mundane laziness of the overfed tourist.

Every morning, along the 3,400 plus miles of shore containing the Gulf, people stroll the beach looking to see what washed in overnight, especially after a storm.  In many cases and locations, they are looking for something to eat or sell for that night’s dinner, and in others, like in Florida where the visitors are likely to be touristas, they are looking for something interesting to take home for a souvenir.  All of Florida was under water during the Jurassic period, way back before Lawrence Whelk was a baby, so you just scratch the surface anywhere and you see the fossilized white shell fragments out of which the sands were created, a process that continues to this day.  Most of the beaches are shallow, and when the Manta Ray jumps, as it did for me, it is off in the distance.

But enough about the beach, let’s get back to me.  As you can see from the picture, I’m red, the color of love, and I have 4 hearts on my front surrounding a jewel that is no doubt of the precious variety.  The old guy left me on display on a post in the parking lot of the Tropical Winds resort on Sanibel Island, right next to the shell washing station.  All you have to do is walk in and pick me up.  I’m about a medium size.  Hurry up, I’m waiting.  :-{)}

P.S. (You don’t want to actually stay at the Tropical Winds Resort, by the way.  The place is a pit, and the price is a joke.  Check out the reviews on Tripadvisor.com, and you’ll see what I mean.)