We were walking. He was on a bicycle. We were on the island of Ambergris Cay in Belize. It’s a touristy island in the Caribbean. We were walking down a sandy road just exploring when we came across him. He didn’t wiz by. He was carrying a full-sized cooler on the handlebars of his bicycle and he looked a little tired. He was weaving a bit.
We said, “Hi!”
He said, “Hi,” back and stopped, balancing his cooler on his bike.
It’s cool how you can stop on a sand road in the middle of nowhere on an island and have such a quick connection with someone you've never met before.
We started talking—about what he did all day, about what was in his cooler. He had two lobsters left. He was selling them on the beach. He'd been walking up and down the beach all day carrying his cooler, which was quite heavy when he began. I told him I didn't want to buy the last two lobsters. Even though my hotel had a little kitchen and I could cook, I was out walking and had no idea when I would be back. Carrying lobsters on my impromptu journey didn’t really seem like a good idea.
That was when I asked him if he might be able to bring a lobster to my hotel the following day.
"HELLO!"
OK, you have to hear this in your head. It had three parts to it. The HE was low, the LLO was a full octave higher and many decibels louder and the OO part was back toward middling.
I laughed.
In fact, I couldn't stop laughing.
It was just like what we said in high-school when we were being obnoxious, as if to say, "No duh!" or, "Obviously!" or, "Only an idiot wouldn't know that!" or ...well you get the idea.
The power of one word, sing-songed like a high-schooler, took me back in an instant to a time of careless fun and ignorant thinking that I knew everything there was to know in the world—a time when I had the utter confidence only the uninformed can have.
I belly laughed.
He called himself Fishman Johnson. He was the go-to guy for fresh fish. He brought me lobster the next day. And every day after that for the rest of my time on the island.
I listened to his stories. And every time I asked a question that apparently I should have already known the answer to, I had the opportunity to laugh.
"HE--LLO--OO!"