Madden Mischief

When you’re walking blissfully along the beachfront saying friendly hellos to fellow beach walkers, why are there always those few who make you feel like only lunatics are friendly.    

Fortunately, most beach walkers will return your smile, even respond saying “hi,” while those whom I call the “self-centered” will stay so far out of tune and into themselves, they make you feel like you’re a ghost, whose friendliness is invisible.  No matter what you say, or how brightly you smile, they don’t even notice you exist.

But thankfully, most whom you pass, if they don’t echo your “hi,” will treat you to a wave confirming we’re both fortunate benefactors of another blissfully sunny day in a Shangri-La known as Boca Raton, FL.

Sure, our beaches are far from Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, crowded with busy people with stuff on their mind and in a great hurry to do things, get to places.  But beach walkers in South Florida are far fewer in numbers, and most have lots of time on their hands and feet in the sand, especially in the summertime on the beachfront after all the snowbirds have fled back north. So, there’s plenty of time and reason to be happy and friendly beach walking.

So Awkward

Still, it just feels so awkward when you’re feeling so chipper and approaching someone walking toward you, when you smile and say “hi,” and they just stare straight ahead, and proceed to go by without an iota of friendliness. It makes yours feel like it came from a ghost, or maybe a Martian from outer space, and you’re both on different planets.  It’s like saying “hi” to a palm tree that drops a coconut on your head.

Of course, if they’re verbally engaged with a partner with whom they’re walking or talking on a cellphone, that’s altogether different and understandable. 

But what if as they approach you looking straight ahead like you’re not there, yet you’re certainly in their field of vision but they just walk on by like you’re a dead crab or a clump of seaweed?  No, you’re a phantom!  That’s not just unfriendly, that’s almost like giving you the finger, almost as if this Mr. or Mrs. self-centered were part of a posse of vigilantes who’d prefer to string you up for daring to be so startlingly friendly in broad daylight.

Makes you feel like saying you’re sorry, that you didn’t mean it, and you’ll promise to never say “hi” again to any stone-faced passersby, especially on this stretch of what might now be called Bitter Beach, Florida.

Well, that’s my story today, folks and I’m sticking to it as the last thing I need is to be found guilty and locked up for just saying “hi.”  Have a nice day! 

Now I’d like to close this by just saying goodbye to that smiling senator from South Carolina. May Sen. Lindsey Graham now be smiling on his way to heaven!

Tom Madden is a writer always seeking to enlighten or just brighten things up a little like the feelings he gets when passing self-centered beach walkers on the daily walks he and his wife Rita take each day in Boca Raton, FL.  Besides all the articles and books he writes, Madden manages TransMedia Group, the PR firm he launched after he left NBC where he was the vice president reporting to the then CEO, his old pal from ABC, Fred Silverman.  Today Madden’s daughter Adrienne Mazzone is president of the ever-buzzy PR firm.