Tiny watermelons and seaside American Idol stalking

 

My mom, Greg and I have been taking some strange ocean themed vacations lately, it seems. The latest one involved us loosely following the American Idol crew along their itinerary in some coastal towns in Northern California. I was unaware of the agenda at first, but it turned out to be one of my mom's elaborate schemes break me into the business of producing the show. 

It started out that we were just enjoying the ocean, doing some wave watching, as there was a nice winter swell, and surfers were out in abundance, riding the giant breakers. Greg and I approached a beach with turquoise blue water, and I noted that the waves looked a bit flat that day.

"Don't let them fool ya," Greg said. "There are some sneakers out there."

"I know all about that," I said. I was savvy to the ocean's wiles. I'd been lured too close to the water a time or two, only to have some rogue wave come out of nowhere and overtake me before I could turn and run.

We watched from a distance as the waves began to grow, and surfers paddled further out to sea to avoid getting caught inside. They began to take their places in the lineup, and soon a surf competition was underway. We watched for a while and then rejoined my mom who had been doing something on her own in the town.

We found ourselves in an alleyway next to an old lady's beach-adjacent house. The lady didn't appear to be home, so we poked around the property a bit. She had a garden in the back with some vines that produced a cluster of tiny melon-like fruits. I thought they looked like watermelons, but my mom insisted that they were some kind of grape.

"Only one way to find out," I said, and I picked one of the oddly shaped green and white striped fruit from the bunch.

I was just about to break it open, certain that I was going to find the innards of a baby watermelon, when I was startled by a voice from behind me. It was the old lady.

"Do you want some chili?" she said, pointing to a table set for four that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.

"How did you...? You just can't go scaring people like that. We were just...admiring your fruit," I said somewhat defensively, although I knew that we'd been trespassing and probably deserved a good scare.

"Let me know if it's too hot," she said, noting my mom's expression as she sampled the dish.

It was actually a plate of spaghetti, but apparently seasoned with chili spice, so my mom gasped a bit after taking her first bite. I thought mine tasted fine, but the old lady proceeded to douse each of our plates with some water, which she poured directly from a cooking pot, effectively thinning out the sauce. 

I continued to eat my spaghetti-chili with the unabashed zeal of a child, sloppily slurping the noodles and leaving little red whip marks across my cheeks. As we ate, we were admiring the view from the lady's property.

On one side was the unassuming alley that had been our mode of entry. But on the other side was the beachfront promenade, which hundreds, maybe thousands of people would traverse in a day. That would be a lot of spaghetti, I thought, mentally calculating the percentage of random trespassers that would be stopping by to admire her strange fruit.

From my seat at the table, I could see the waves breaking in perfect tubes, and the angle was such that I could stare down the barrel into what seemed like an endless tunnel. Their form was so perfect, and they held their shape so long, it looked as though one could just walk down the middle of one and reach the other end of the beach without even getting wet. I pointed this out to my mom, but she didn't see it.

"All I see is the tent awning in front of those businesses," she said.

I looked, and I'll be damned if that was all I could see now, too. My perfect wave turned out to be nothing more than an optical illusion created by some man made sunshades. I was a bit disappointed.

Later, we were in a dingy hotel room, the kind with faux walnut wood panel wallboard and sandy shag carpet that never gets vacuumed. I was watching a black and white TV set that had a live feed of the American Idol set. It was just raw, unedited hidden camera stuff, where they were hoping to catch the contestants in those rare unscripted dramatic moments which they would later re-write and re-enact in their typical overproduced reality show style.

A knock came on the door. It was a black lady of about 30 with long hair, not straightened, but neatly worn in a pony tail. She wore a navy blue dress with oversize white buttons down the front and a white belt that accentuated her figure.

"Are you ready, Andrew?" she asked me.

"Ready for what?" I asked, unaware of who she was or what I was supposed to be ready for.

"To help us produce the show," she said. 

I started to get excited as I put the pieces together. We'd been surreptitiously following the Idol tour, and somehow we were now in the mix. 

"Oh, that would be awesome," I said. "I've always wanted to see some of that stuff up close." (I make no apologies for the embarrassing fact that I've watched the show since its inception.)

"OK, we'll get started soon. Do you need some of this?" She held out a joint and offered to light it for me. 

I looked down and saw that I already had one in my hand, which I endeavored to hide quickly. "No, thanks," I said, casually putting my hands in my pockets. "Let's get to work, shall we?" We discussed details for a minute, and she promised to fetch me within the hour. 

When she left, my mom stumbled out of the hall closet where, apparently, she'd been hiding. Some smoke wafted out with her, as she'd been cooped up in there the whole time, nervously smoking a joint of her own. This was a twenty-something version of my mom, with long, straight auburn hair and thick, black plastic framed glasses.

"No, thanks, Mom," I said when she held out the half burnt remnant in my direction. "I guess I've got some work to do."