I walk down to the beach a lot.  I only live three blocks away, and it’s a nice break from the hut for an hour or two.  While I’m there, I take in all the lovely people that frequent the beaches of Waikiki on a regular basis.  The vast majority of them are tourists, being a tourist town and all.  I’m not going to use this as an outlet to tourist bash or tourist hate, because the plight I’m here to discuss today extends to a wide range of human demographics.  The scurge that is people who think they are cooler then they are.

I know what you are thinking.  I can hear your concern already, “oh no, do I think I am cooler then I am?”  Don’t worry, the answer is probably yes you do, but you are not who I am here to hate on either.  The people that make my shit list are those people who think they are cooler then reality will allow.

Think of the coolest person you know.  You don’t have to know them personally, they can be a celebrity, or Joe Camel.  They don’t have to be alive anymore.  They don’t even have to have ever been alive (I knew you were thinking of Roger Rabbit).  Okay, so you are picturing the coolest person you can think of and the coolest person who can possibly ever exist?  That’s it, that’s the limit.  There is nothing cooler than him/her/it, and there can never be.  That is the top of the cool chart.

Somewhere on the bottom of the cool chart is some inanimate nothing, like cud.  Cud is at the bottom of the spectrum and your coolest person ever is at the top of the spectrum (it’s a vertical spectrum).  The coolness of everyone/everything ever falls within that range (you are somewhere near the bottom, or middle at best).  With this new scale-o-coolness in mind, let’s revisit the beach.

Here you come, walking down the sidewalk.  You are whiter then the ghost of the Michelen Man, which means you are clearly not from around here.  Like most men at the beach, you are shirtless which shows off your amazing Japanese Kanji tattooed shoulder.  iPod buds fill your ears and the air around them with who knows what (Chris Brown?).

I see you are walking with sandals in hand.  It’s summer here dude (even here we have seasons) and your feet are going to burn if you don’t put those back on your feet in this noonday sun.  Oh sorry, I didn’t look down at your bulging muscles until the third time you did (don’t worry, they are still there), clearly you are a tough guy and can handle the blisters on the bottom of your feet. Now you move to the sand because surely the sand will be cooler then the sidewalk, right? Wrong.  Now your feet are burning up to the point where you have to remove them from the ground. So you…start to dance?  You are turning the ‘get my feet off the sweltering sand’ action into a dance?  Do you think you are fooling us?

You finally dance your way over to the bench (the nice cool metal one) and look around to see if anyone saw your hot coals dance, don’t worry only me and everyone else.  What’s that you are doing now?  Oh, lighting up a cigarette.  That’s brilliant, that’ll be sure to cool you down! You own that cigarette, you own that Chris Brown beat as you thump it out on your pecks, and you own the sores on your feet that will be smothered in salsa de aloe tonight.  I would tell you, but you already know it.

This guy was too cool that it hurt (himself, literally).  If you think you are cooler then the coolest person you can think of, then you are wrong.  You can’t possibly be cooler then the coolest person you can think of, so when you think you are, it’s time to check yourself.  If you have read this, and still think you are the coolest person you can think of (or are cooler then the coolest person you can think of other than yourself), then it’s time to get that Cooldar fixed down at the shop.

Today Amy and I went to Ala Moana beach park for a bit to chill before her long flight home and for me to detox a bit from the usual stresses.  While we were in the water Amy noticed a guy near our towels, not very suspicious looking or acting but just, there.   I took the opportunity to make fun of her, which I have been known to do from time to time.  This time it was about one day that Amy left a note on some random girls towel on the beach.  They had had a conversation earlier and the girl was nowhere to be found when Amy had to leave, so she left her number on the girls towel and they later became good friends.

So I said to her “he isn’t leaving with any of our stuff so maybe he just left a note on your towel?” She pretended like she didn’t want to laugh but her cheeks gave her away and we had a good cackle in the ocean.

Inside jokes and sea-giggles, great story so far for you avid readers I know.  The rub comes half an hour later or so when we are back at our towels shooting the shit and I see a scrap of paper five or six feet away.  It’s folded lightly in half and the two sides that are visible to me are blank, but being a nosey-parker tree-hugger (thanks goes out to mother for my snooping abilities ), I got up to get the paper. I turn it over, and I find this staring back at me:

You are a very attractive and beautiful woman! Please write me.

I know what you are thinking.  Why the hell would this guy redact his own name and address from his pick-up-slip?  He wouldn’t, I did that for reasons I’m unsure of yet.  But let’s start with the obvious reaction: Really? If you take a minute to review the note (I know it’s short, but it holds so much power).  The fact that this note appeared a few feet from my towel just minutes after I had been making fun of Amy for doing something similar (but very different upon further review) was amusing enough.

I invite you though to take a second look at the note with me, as there are several gems hidden within it’s single-creased goodness.   Just scroll up a little and read it again, and take note of:

1. The Name: You can’t see it but I can and its a very straight-forward all American name.  It’s something on par with ‘Chris Brown’, and why this is important will be discussed momentarily.
2. The Address: Again, you can’t see it in it’s entirety, but I have left the important part untouched.  ‘Kamahameha’ is not a road/street/highway/word.  ‘Kamehameha’ (notice the fourth letter is an ‘e’ not an ‘a’) is a road/street/highway/word/king/fireball.  This guy misspelled his own address. Excellent start to what will become an epic relationship for sure. Something tells me he’s the kind of guy who asks for directions…to his own house.
3. The Statement: I can appreciate that you didn’t leave very much room for writing on your perfectly hand perforated scrap of paper. But then to use the little room you did have to be redundantly repetitious, is sorely inexcusable . It took you 46 characters (spaces included) to tell her she was hot.  Next time, if you insist on there being a next time, just write ‘You’re a hot hottie!’  That is just as redundant, conveys the same message, and is less then half the amount of characters. Woot! Also if you read this sentence a few times over it sounds like it was written by someone whom English was not their native language and with a name like ‘Chris Brown’ I refuse to believe this is the case. What’s up with that?
4. The Request: Yes. It really says ‘Please write me.’ You didn’t have enough courage to engage in a dialogue with her, fine.  You aren’t a hip kid and don’t have a MySpace/Facebook account to point her to, fine.  You don’t even have a computer or an email account, one last fine.  You took the time to write out your address wrong on a scrap of paper, and put it on her towel presumably when she wasn’t around (she may never have even read it, on account of the winds on the beach), which means you had a pen and paper at the beach but you don’t have a phone number?  Write?  Why not telegraph, or fax then?

Bottom line is, I’m not hating on paper-scrap-towel-dropping for those of us who lack Dutch courage (even though I give the roomie a hard time about the one time she did it, on occasion).  However, taking the easy road and avoiding any face-to-face interaction, only to make a request of someone to write you snail mail is a bit much, no? Maybe I’m just new-fashioned, but this is asking someone you don’t know to contact you using what is arguably the most costly and effort-laden form of communication, she needs paper, pen, envelope, stamps, the list is endless.  And if she is truly in-fact as ‘attractive and beautiful’ (two for one!) as you say she is, she probably doesn’t have anything to do but huddle herself around the fireplace alone (she is single of course, all the hot ones are) sip on a glass of wine and write you a long letter with her fountain pen.  She’ll sign the letter with her lipstick covered lips and close the envelope with a wax seal. Only for it to be found a little later on the sidewalk by some asshole with a blog.