What do you do when temptation comes your way? Hopefully, you'll do the right thing. That of course leads to the next question. What is the right thing? That which is right for you or that which is right for someone else? It's not often that right applies to both. I had a temptation recently. I'm not sure if I did the right thing, but I did do my best.
It was a nice hot day, near the end of spring, and I was just lounging around at one of the local beaches, bored and not really knowing what to do with myself. For some reason the beach was almost deserted, so I couldn't even chat up any little ladies.
There I was, leaning against a tree, when this young woman came past, walking daintily along the water's edge. Now if she'd been your typical beach-goer, tanned and bikini clad, I'd have been down there like a shot to say hullo, but she wasn't.
She looked to be in her early twenties and she was very stylishly dressed. She had a blouse and a skirt swinging just above her knees, a wide leather belt accentuating the outfit. My guess, from the look of her legs, and very nice legs they were, was that she was also wearing pantyhose. Stylish, but sensible, shoes completed the ensemble.
She was, to say the least, out of place. I sauntered down to see what was going on. We must have looked quite a contrast, me being stylishly dressed in ragged shorts and equally ragged t-shirt, with thongs completing my own chic ensemble. (Thongs are a type of shoe. Get your mind out of the gutter.)
"Afternoon," I said, smiling. "Um, no disrespect, but you look a little out of place. No problem, is there?"
"There is a problem," she said smiling, "but it's being addressed. We ran over some glass and we have two flat tyres. My husband is up with the car waiting for a service crew to come and assist us. I told him I was going to stroll along the beach and see if I could find some nice seashells. I've been wanting some to put in our garden."
"Bad luck about the tyres," I said. "However, you're not going to find much in the way of seashells along the water's edge. Anything easy to get has been picked clean or washed back out to sea."
I paused for a moment, plainly considering the situation.
"If I remember correctly," I said hesitantly, "there's a sort of a cave a little further down, just past where those cliffs start." I pointed to where the land rose sharply, about a hundred yards further along. "While I don't collect shells myself, I noticed that there are quite a few in the cave. Apparently the tide sweeps them in and they wind up trapped. Would you care to see?"
We were by no means alone on the beach, and it wasn't as though I was asking her to sneak away into the bushes. People were actually walking past the mouth of the cave even as I gestured towards it.
When I said it was a sort of cave, it had probably been a proper cave sometime in the past and quite a large one, too. However, the front of the cliff had fallen, resulting in a large dent in the cliff with a ridge along the front of it. High tide would wash shells in and they would wind up trapped against the ridge when the tide eased. Shell collectors often visited there.
