Woody watched as Biddy dropped to her knees and quickly disappeared under a tiny mound of earth. Every once in a while, a large clump curved upwards and unpacked against the sky before arching back down towards a fractured, brown charicture of unlaid plans and overinflated worth. Woody’s hairline was grazed, repeatedly, but he was not positioned close enough to share in an imagined competition. The spectacle resembled that of a baby bird, flapping his wings but not understanding what it meant to actually fly. Woody was *entertained and annoyed* and wanted to be back at home. For years, being flummoxed would have meant that he was prone and hidden against the ocean’s soft, mushy floor. As long as he promised not to trap any air, the depths would never return him or fail to keep his opinions safe. How ironic, a lifeguard, assigning human conditions to a place that had continued to retreat in order to prevent manmade harm from desecrating its provision. Lately, nostalgia made the old man buoyant. So Woody just stood there on the shore, bloated, and looked out for a *memory* that he could still work with. It was not a time for forebodance or any other literary device that mirrored what he was feeling inside. At this moment, Woody was a *compassionate swindler*, and the term was actually ‘foreboding’, that was why the water was a calm reflection of the sun, and was staged in tranquil blues and unrepentant greens, these revelations fought over whether they should throw him back towards the others or keep him as part of a running gag. Woody, was highlighted in their notes, and he stared until his eyes grew tight and fuzzy, all of youth lost inside a headache and the hologram of the sides of his nose. The rays from above provided the radiation which reduced his purpose to that of a hesitant interference, much like a lukewarm ensemble of hors d’oeuvres. It was enough to free himself from a vision that was overdue for being reconditioned, he walked a bit to the South, the water, that he did not realize he had been standing in felt *refreshing* and brought him back to a tingling in his knees. But no one else was in the water and aside from Biddy’s ankles, nothing was on the beach. Woody remembered that Jim had once been here as well, and that pulverized bark had occasionally interrupted his breathing. With nothing else to do, he kissed his hand and reciprocated by vertically stroking the right side of his neck. A family would be ill advised, as he apologized for being *intimate* while working late. The mother of the boys he had rescued so long ago, understood the importance of *punctuality* and now Woody was ashamed for never again calling them his *friends*. “I guess we all grow tired of waiting,” Maybe if he had been less concerned about *chipping paint and infringement* he would be down the beach with Jim. He knew little about Jim, and before today had never seen him, or was Woody searching for an option that was fluid, instead of a man that was garnished with a late blooming tuft of *mold*? In one of the more *desperate* attempts at satire, Woody leaned over until his chest was pushing down firmly on the undersides of Biddy’s feet. He was not sure about her abilities to fold his trunks or prepare his dinner, but the way she squirmed and shouted, “Uncle, Uncle!” he was touched that she already thought of him as family. Age offers little by way of sympathy, when the essence of being *disingenuous* fits better with a wrinkle smoothing the surface of affectation, than a wave that is only rumbling because its time has abruptly run out at the shore.