dunno

It is not beyond the realms of possibility that a small, yellow plastic
spade will one day wash up on the shores of the east coast of North America.

If you find it, it belongs to me.

Er, well, not me exactly.

It belongs to my four-year-old son Jack.
I think I dropped my spade in the car park on the way back from the beach
and a non-American has already snaffled it.

"Look, daddy," cried Jack after his spade was sucked into the ocean and
could be seen bobbing up and down on the outgoing waves.

He had been building a sandcastle by a rock pool, quite a distance from
where the gentle waves were lapping at the shore when, suddenly, a big wave washed in.
Not only did it wipe out the masterpiece of construction he was working on, it also washed his little, yellow plastic spade away.
Last I saw it it was heading towards New Zealand, possibly for a stopover
before pressing on to Hawaii, then California.

"Can you get it for me, daddy?" Jack asked.

"Um, no ... I think it's going out to sea too quickly," I stammered, as I
interrupted my own sandcastle-building activities and gazed forlornly at the vast blue ocean. "Here, use mine."

I know there are some fathers who would risk their lives to retrieve their
son's little yellow, plastic spades, and retain possession of their own
spades — but I am not one of them.

There are two main reasons for this:

1. When I swim, which is rarely, I like to be able to touch the bottom. I don't know a lot about the sea but what I do know is that I am very unlikely to be able to touch the bottom off the continental shelf.
2. Killer sharks swim in Australian waters and sometimes they like to avenge all the fish who have been caught by humans. For my money, a little yellow plastic spade bobbing on the waves is a bit too much like the little yellow floaters I used to use while fishing. I am already down to my last two legs and my last two arms and I don't want to lose any more.

"But where will it go to?" Jack wanted to know as the spade bobbed further
and further out.

I really didn't know.

Last year we lost a plastic spade in a similar manner and found it the next
day washed up a few hundred yards along the same beach.

But, as I said, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that it will
ride ocean currents thousand and thousands of miles, fanned by the trade winds, if not the spade winds, and end up on the other side of the world.

Perhaps it will be picked up by a French solo around-the-world
yachtsperson. It would be about time. The Australian navy, using my tax
dollars, have rescued enough of them.

Perhaps it will be washed up on the beach of a remote Pacific island where it will be found by a marooned sailor, who was really hoping to get a reply to his message in a bottle, but will be thankful anyway because he now has the means to maintain his sanity by building sandcastles until rescuers arrive.

Perhaps it will get caught up in a fishing net and mistakenly end up in a
can of Taiwanese tuna.

"I really don't know where it might end up, Jack," I said solemnly as I
looked to the curved blue horizon . "I wish we had written a return address
on it though."

©January 3, 2001, John Martin. All Rights Reserved.

 

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