Winner, Winner, Chicken and Feta Dinner

So the wonderful Tanya Espanya had a story contest in which the winners would receive a book. Why?

"I need to unload the book(s) I'm ready to admit I'm never going to read to make room for new ones (that I probably won't read either)," said Toronto's cultural and travel maven.

She also said, "what if I don't like the book you sent me? Suck it up, loser."

Fair enough, her contest, her rules and she does rule, just ask the cowering Rowbear in the corner.

What were the requirements?

"You have to leave a comment telling me something interesting. Here are some suggestions but you are not limited to these:

-how you met and chose your spouse/partner
-how you picked your kid's/pet's name
-how you got the job you're in

You know, that sort of thing."

Um, by the way, everybody that entered, won.

I wanted to post the meeting of The Missus, but with the twentith anniversary of that day coming up, I had to save that. So I went with favorite honeymoon story instead...


A TV ad ripped this off, but The Missus, all the people on the boat and meself all saw it first, back in '91.

The Missus and I were honeymooning at Swept Away in Negril, Jamaica. Whilst on the beach, you could book a catamaran that would take you to different spots around the island.

The one thing about this particular boat was that they served this concoction called the "dirty banana," which I believe is coconut rum and bananas.

The trick was that the sugar would sneak up on you if you weren't too careful and you were lit before you knew it. The Missus and I were some of the few people that figured out that getting drunk on a catamaran might not be the best idea in the world.

Pretty soon everyone except the five of us who didn't heavily imbibe and the crew of the boat, were the only ones who weren't sitting on the edge or on the verge of falling off. Amazingly nobody was remotely scared, because they were too drunk and they rode each wave as if it were a rollercoaster.

We finally arrived at Rick's Cafe, a nice little restaurant where you can still cliff dive to your heart's content. You would swim off the boat, climb the stairs and then you would realize that you were all too mortal, as you stared down the cliff, some thirty feet above the water.

The Missus wasn't eager, though I was...until I got up there. Once you make the leap, it's over fairly quickly. Though the worst part of it is not the dive, but afterwards...when you look up and realize that you are some fifteen feet under the water and that you can't panic. You have to just slowly drift upward.

As drunk as everyone was, everyone realized that the best way to dive was feet first. Everyone did that until this one guy, who according to the scar on his chest was a member of the "zipper club." He had had open-heart surgery or whatever surgery that was necessary for them to make that huge incision into the middle of his chest.

Mister Zipper decided that unlike the twenty people that went before him, that he was going to dive head first. That he did and he looked quite graceful for the first ten feet down...then his feet started coming forward ahead of the rest of his body.

Now mind you, there were three catamarans worth of tourists, some people at the restaurant and some people staying at a nearby hotel all watching this. It is an amazing thing to hear over fifty people collectively gasp and then collectively go "ohhh!"

Mister Zipper landed flat on his back and sunk down, just like Daffy Duck or Wil E. Coyote in an old Warner Brothers cartoon. He did manage to get back on the boat under his own power, but his whole backside was beet red for the entire boat ride back to the hotel's beach and his face was red with embarassment for nearly as long.


There it is. So what did I win for this meandering mess that shows that I can't tell a non-fiction story to save my life...er...fine story?

Just what I needed, another incentive to become successful as a writer so that my family can discover all the corners of Europe. Ahh, I can smell the moussaka already. Yassou!