Daytona Beach: (n) city in NE Florida, a seashore resort

Oblivion can be very powerful if you know how to use it.

Acting stupid is not the same.

But legitimately being unaware or vacant of knowledge can occasionally win you favor in the Universe—and sympathy from those who are baffled by your misunderstanding.

There was a time I was young enough that I should not have been on my own, but old enough that I was allowed to be.

It is the true danger zone of the human journey.

Everything is legal but nothing is necessarily prudent.

I was traveling around at the time with two young ladies, who persisted in believing that we could make great music together—and someday others would confirm it.

We had absolutely no idea what was going on in the world around us. We had some sort of strange amnesia that caused us to think that the Earth was a desert island—and even though there were a multitude of creatures creeping along, we were quite unaware of their presence.

This is the condition we were in the first time we rolled into Daytona Beach, Florida. Unknown to us, we had arrived in town nine days before the Daytona 500 race.

I had a vague recollection that this was some sort of very large event.

With cars.

The young ladies, when told about the Daytona 500, questioned:

“500 what?”

We landed during a time that was far enough away from the race itself that there were still lots of motel rooms. But the people renting them were nervous that if we occupied a room, would we get out soon enough that they could triple the price for the racing crowd?

We didn’t care.

We promised we would only stay for two days, and we set out to learn everything we could about Daytona Beach.

The first day, the town was pretty vacant, and the beach was free of obstruction.

We discovered something that was so neat it still makes me grin: you could drive your car on the beach.

So we did—up and down—careful to avoid pedestrians and dogs chasing frisbees.

It was so much fun.

We pulled over, opened up our windows and doors and looked at the ocean until it felt like the huge splash was gazing back at us.

It was so much fun that we actually stayed one day too long. So by the time we left the region, people were everywhere. It looked like they were standing up, stacked together like cordwood.

But we had already enjoyed the town.

We had investigated the beach.

We had perused the ocean.

So we were ready to move on.

Unfortunately, because of the Daytona 500, we had to drive all the way to Fort Myers, Florida, before we were able to get a motel room that didn’t cost everything we had in our pockets and more.

But it was fun. You see, we were young. If we had arrived two days later, we’d have been jammed and unable to get in.

Sometimes God asks Mother Nature not to punish us for being ridiculous.

There’s an old passage that says, “God winks.”

Yes. Because He’s a Father, He sometimes has to understand that we’re just brats. Many of our antics are based on foolishness instead of evil.