The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Mermaid Jim used to live south of me, the closest person to the island’s Head, its southernmost inhabitant. I only encountered him infrequently and so he never remembered meeting before which meant I heard his stories numerous times. Invariably he would recount his mermaid story, and invariably I’d wait to find discrepancies from the previous tellings.

“I was scuba diving in the Bahamas,” he’d start in, apropos of nothing in our conversation and only moments from new introductions, how do ya do’s, where ya live? “I was down maybe 30 feet off the reef when she swam right up to me, talked to me like I’m talking to you, bubbles coming out of her mouth while she held steady with her tail. Her tail, man, her tail!”

“Mermaid?” I’d say after hearing the story the first time. “Right,” Jim would say, grateful I wasn’t rolling my eyes or calling 911 for psychiatric help.

“I saw her the next day and the next, every day I dove down there.”

“Whaddaya talk about?”I’d ask. “Nothing much,” he’d always respond.

I guess if I met a mermaid, I’d have some questions and maybe she would too, but Jim apparently didn’t and his sea princess was similarly uncurious. It made his mermaid story short and sweet but not particularly interesting. Still, he never embellished it. Never altered it. He met a mermaid, they talked, he went home. Simple facts. Extraordinary encounter. Worth telling everyone he met about it — mermaids exist, he’s seen one, he’s even talked to one.

Once I asked him if he thought she had a family, if maybe there was a whole undersea city of mermen and mermaids, if they had a watery civilization, if ….
“How would I know?” Jim answered, annoyed that his one mermaid wasn’t plenty as it obviously was for him. “I met a mermaid,” he said, “and she talked to me.”

Developers built four houses near Jim’s place maybe 10 years ago where there hadn’t been anyone for half a mile either direction. Jim told me, last encounter we had, he’d be leaving for over the mountains, maybe Mazama, where there would be less neighbors to bother him. I nearly asked why he wasn’t headed back toward water, maybe be reunited with his mermaid, but I didn’t.   I figure in a way he’s taking her with him.

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