Last night I took the stage and did a reading of a piece I wrote for the first time ever. I told a story for Tenx9, a community storytelling event here in Nashville. The event was held in collaboration with Folx Table (founded by Person of Interest alum Emma McCallie) around the topic of strangers. Today I’m telling that story to you, dear reader. I hope you’ll enjoy Blue Crabs.
Strange things happen to me. Some people call it lucky girl syndrome, some call it the law of attraction. Some people use it as a jumping-off point to whine about how nothing good ever happens to them. My mom always says, “Ask and you shall receive.”
Whatever we’ll call it, let’s just say sometimes I find myself in the right place at the right time in ways that feel almost like ordinary magic.
Speaking of my mother, she’s also imparted some other wisdoms on me that mostly involve pinning my money into my underwear and never talking to strangers. Let's get it out of the way right now– this is advice I don’t take because I usually have a credit card and I’ve never met a stranger. This will be pivotal later. Now to the story at hand…
Charleston is one of my favorite places. After honeymooning there in 2012, my husband and I have gone back several times. It’s always a favorite.
My husband and I are pretty excellent travelers but at first glance, we aren’t super compatible at it. I have a very particular way of doing things that involves research and making google maps full of points of interest, and a list of possible activities. He’s all vibes. He wants to find good food and a good coffee shop to visit every day, and then he wants to wander around. It was on this particular trip to Charleston that I realized our fused way of doing things is actually the superior methodology.
Every day we’d wake up, leave our hotel, and walk to the same coffee shop and every day the same barista was there to pass our two cappuccinos over the counter to us. We’d sit and read and hang out for a while, and eventually, we’d end up talking coffee with the baristas there because my husband was a coffee roaster at the time. One barista, Chris, was particularly delightful, and near the end of our trip, we looked forward to seeing him every day.
As we were wrapping up our plans for the last few days I decided I wanted to try and go catch some blue crabs. We’d seen them a lot on our beachside walks, and I’d never done anything like that before. So naturally, I asked Chris where to go crabbing.
He referred us to some tours, and then, almost shy about it, he offered to take us crabbing himself. It was an easy yes for us, we’d known the guy for a whole week. And he knew of a place! A good place! Plus he was a skilled fisherman and crabber. We left the coffee shop that morning giddy. We just had a dinner reservation to get through, and one sleep before it was time to go crabbing the next morning.
The dinner reservation was a tasting menu at a famous chef’s restaurant that was spectacular but for the interest of keeping this story brief, I’m going to skip all details except for the fact that there was a wine pairing and we ended up DRUNK. If you’ve ever been drunk after a good meal, you know that sometimes you need a secondary location and you know that sometimes that secondary location isn’t exactly planned out. So in searching my brain for somewhere to go, I remembered that someone from home had mentioned a place called the Palace Hotel and I thought it sounded fancy. We hopped into an Uber, found ourselves at the diviest dive bar I’ve ever seen, and saddled up with a bucket of Miller high life ponies in a bar where the majority of the patrons were over 50 and taking shots of Fireball.
A bartender our age talked with us for so long that we exchanged phone numbers– his name was Keon. After drinking with Keon for long enough to sober up a little bit, we caught a car back to our hotel because after all we had early morning plans to go crabbing all day.
Hungover, we roused ourselves and drove to the home of our very new friend Chris. It’s on the drive over, headaches pounding, that we realize we were driving to a stranger's house before dawn. As we pulled into his driveway, we let go of those worries. It was happening, and it was too late to turn back. Chris was waiting outside of his car with tackle boxes, crab baskets, coolers, his girlfriend Alex, and their two dogs Midas and Bishop. We all loaded in and they drove us to trespass on some land that had been for sale for three years. We set up on a dock and spent the entire day crabbing, fishing, and talking about life. Chris was a designer, and Alex was a fine artist. They were both wanting to take the leap into freelance life, and I was several years into it at that point. We had so much in common, and I think the friendship was cemented before we’d ever caught a single crab.
We spent the day laying in the sun, fishing and catching crabs, watching their dogs play in the water. After my headache dissipated, I remember feeling infinite that day. I was lucky to be alive, lucky to be young, lucky to be curious enough.
When the day was finished, we realized that we had heaps of crab and fish, and they invited us to their house to cook dinner with them. Again, a very easy yes. They said they’d invite friends. Just like that, crabbing with strangers became cooking dinner with new friends. As we were preparing food, the doorbell rang. Alex was feeding the dogs, and Chris had his hands full peeling and cleaning shrimp, so I went to grab the door. When I opened it, Keon, the bartender from the night before, was standing on the other side. Chris and Keon, unbeknownst to us, were friends.
To this day we’re still friends with Chris and Alex, they visited with us when we lived in Austin, TX and we’ve gone to visit with them in the new city they call home, Atlanta.
The story doesn’t stop there with its strangeness and its luck.
A few years after meeting Chris and Alex, a friend from Austin named Becky gave me a birthday present. When I unwrapped it I was shocked to find that it was a painting of a photo I took of my favorite place in Austin, Barton Springs, unmistakably painted by Alex Waggoner who I’d gone crabbing with years before.
Becky had never met Alex but had followed her online for a while because Alex and Chris’s roommate was one of Becky’s best friends. Alex’s work reminded Becky of me, and because of this, she commissioned a painting for me from my own photo of the springs.
I was speechless.
The photo hangs within sight of the place where I do most of my writing, and where I wrote this story, as a reminder of the luck you can have if you stay curious and strike up a conversation.
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I got goosebumps several times while reading this. And I can testify that you've never met a stranger. You invited me to share a table with you when I was looking for a place to sit at Riverside Grill Shack. And I was so moved by your warmth and positive life force that I just wanted to be around it more! We only met for coffee that one time afterwards, but if I ever settle back down in Nashville, I hope you'll let me hang with you again. You are a beautiful gift to this world.
What a lovely story!!