Body less than perfect? Ever wonder if you would again feel comfortable enough to wear shorts? Sleeveless tops? A two-piece?

Get those togs out of the Goodwill bag and come on down to Surfside Beach, South Carolina. No embarrassment here to be walking along the shore in white socks and flip-flops, bathing suits with tops that guaranteed to 'keepemfromfloppin' but should be sent back for refund, tummies that in some alternate stylish universe would be covered, hanging out jiggling along in time to music blasting from the Elvis impersonator on a pool deck. No shame here.

Come on down!

Not many Spring Break college kids here; most of the beach goers are well past college age. One announced from a near-by table last night at dinner that he was about to attend his 59th college class reunion. By anyone's standards, that's a long-lived life. I sat there momentarily wondering if he would arrive at the alumnae dance with his wispy reddish comb-over, and would everyone say how good he looked for a man his age...and by extension how snazzy he looked driving that Mercedes.

Ah but back to the beach.

I may have mentioned in a previous blog, or you may have figured it out for yourself, that I am an 'awfulizer.' I speak positively but think disasteriously. Inside I am waiting for the next tragedy to befall the world. Sadly, I am not often disappointed. And so I sit here, eight stories up from the beach, and look out over the Atlantic, calm waves coming in and going out with that regularity one come to expect from waves and tides, waiting and watching.

For what you wonder?

My eyes peer at the eastern horizon wanting to be the first to see it, to sound the warning, that the wall of water which is the tsunami to end all tsunamis is headed for South Carolina and by extension, the east coast. It could happen. All those polyester clad beach bums, those who have saved their dollars for their one week at the beach and those to whom life has been exceedingly grand who own property on the shore, and any errant college student who has picked this week to sun and surf here, all three groups will hear my warning and take off for the inland hills. But wait! There are no inland hills in South Carolina. Only flatness, swamps, low country.

I am thinking I should get a head start on the evacuation and let the warning sirens do the work for which I had planned to win a Medal of Freedom, or whatever the president calls that highest civilian honor. Let someone else be a heroine.

And that's what I think about it.