One time, many years ago, before finding Sowal, I was behind a woman on line at a deli in LBI, N.J. She sighed incessantly about the wait time and how she needed to get back to work. She went on to tell another patron that this was why she moved over the Causeway, and off the island, that all these tourists just made her life so miserable, especially during peak season. I mean didn't we know that this was her Island, and that we were all just a nuisance, like biting flies blowing in from the north?

All I could think of was that she could have moved to the moon and probably would have complained about lack of societal amenities there too.

She finally got her sandwich or salad, I'm not really sure, because I didn't care. I just wanted her ugliness to be absent from my pleasant weekend stay. It was off season, too cold to swim, but a beautiful weekend.

I didn't know that she worked for a real estate company initially. It wasn't until after we got our lunch, and we went to the real estate office to meet an agent, who was going to show us a house for sale, that I saw her at the copier. Suddenly, I felt a sudden rush of anger about her condescension.
We'd vacationed at LBI for 20+ years, often renting the same house, and I felt very much like it was my little stretch of beach that I was a steward of for that one or two weeks. I knew the name of the owner of Hands Department store, looked forward to getting blueberry pie to take home...