Life’s best moments are usually unscripted

I’ve mentioned Bob Cannan, an old friend, a time or two before.

I’m doing it again because, several weeks ago, he sent me an email that has been rattling around in my head ever since.

That email was linked to a “Calvin and Hobbes” comic strip in which Calvin asks Hobbes what happens af

ter we die.

Hobbes’ response is that some of us would become saxophone players in an all-girl cabaret. To which Calvin commented that it was nice to see that Hobbes believed in heaven too.

Appended to the strip was Bob’s mention of something we used to do almost 40 years ago when we were both young officers with the rest of our lives still somewhere over the horizon.

At the time, we were both stationed in Virginia and lived with our wives near a place called Lynnhaven Inlet where there was a fishing pier that jutted out into Chesapeake Bay.

It was a place where we’d go on random Friday evenings to blow off a little steam and do a bit of crabbing with the crab nets I kept around throughout my entire career.

What would happen was that we’d be sitting around at home, one of us would call the other and, shortly, we’d be on our way to the pier.

Our planning was usually along the lines of we were late for any movies playing, our wives weren’t interested in coming along, but there were still a few hours of Friday left and, “What the heck. Let’s go catch some crabs.”

We’d stop at a local supermarket for ice, snacks, cold beer (more on that later), and a package or two of chicken necks for bait. Total cost: less than $10. Price of admission to the pier: $2.50 each. And, with that, the evening got underway.

On late Friday evenings, on a pier poking into Chesapeake Bay, we were never alone and the cast of characters (worth the price of admission by themselves) would’ve filled any short story worth writing.

The evening I best remember was one in which all of the other crabbers seemed to be standing shoulder to shoulder at the end of the pier. Seeing this, we started to set up about halfway out. As we were baiting our nets, another crabber came by and said that all of the crabs were running at the end of the pier. Bob asked if I wanted to move and, thinking out loud, I said, “I’m not sure the crabs know where the pier ends.”

Fifteen minutes later, our first net yielded half a dozen very large blue crabs — a result that also drew about two-thirds of the crowd from the end of the pier.

We kept at it — all while solving the world’s and the Navy’s problems, eating snacks, and trying to retrieve beer from a cooler now filling rapidly with very angry blue crabs. Here, I should note that the theory of separate coolers — even after several bloody bites — never once occurred to us.

I never said we were smart.

Around midnight, we’d head home, wake the wives, and begin boiling crabs — adding whole onions, corn on the cob and potatoes to the mix. This “meal” involved a lot of laughter and would usually wrap up at around three in the morning.

We repeated such evenings frequently and what’s been rattling around in my head all these weeks was Bob’s mentioning that these outings were still his idea of heaven. They’re some of the best memories of my life, too — etched in my mind because of their often absolute hilarity and the companionship of a great friend.

These days, we tend to spend a lot of effort trying to create great memories with cruises, foreign travel, destination resorts and what have you.

It’s not a bad thing, but I’d wager that if you looked back, you’d notice that the best moments we’ve all had were unplanned, unanticipated, and usually involved simple and shared experiences.

In short, they just happened and, years later, the memories can be summoned up by something as simple as a few words in an email.

“Priceless,” as the commercial says, is their best description.

Pinched and bleeding fingers, in our case, notwithstanding.

Larry Simoneaux lives in Edmonds. Send comments to larrysim@comcast.net.