Only The Good

If you've blogged as long as I have, you sometimes get an idea for a blog that you think you might have written about before. But I'm too lazy to search to see if this is out there already. So I'm writing it anyway.

We're riding in G's car on a summer day. He has a sunroof and the windows are open so all of us have hair blowing wild and salty-smelling in the sea air. Down the long road between the island and Destin, that smallest "fishing village of tourists galore." G drives fast but skillfully, so you don't feel scared he's going to wreck. J. is in the front seat and I'm hanging on in the middle of the back.

I don't remember where we were going or what we were doing. I think it was just a week or so before I went away to join the Navy and this was (we thought) my last day before boot camp. (Another day another story).

I know I'm going to lose the more crumudgeonly of you with this but here goes. The radio is belting out Billy Joel's "Only the Good Die Young" and we are all singing along, happy, young, but trying very hard not to be good. Secure that we'll sing this song again someday when we're all grandparents.

The sand is very white, like snow it blinds you if you stare; the air smells of seaweed drying on the beaches to either side of us.

The lyric goes "I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints; the sinners are much more fun." I remember a girl I once knew who said "He's going to be sorry he said that someday" and me thinking "I don't think he will, actually."

We're all laughing. And we're not at all sorry about it.