Super Dooper Bowl Sunday

Key West is the most social place I have ever been. I'd forgotten how much I had loved it as a co-ed.

Scott and I make our way about town meeting other visitors, bar tenders, waiters, locals, shop owners, and anyone else who crosses our path.

The older man at the burger place who recommends the pizza at Finnegan's Wake against all logic.

The lady at the Butterfly Museum with the lizard jewelry and the knee length hair who gives us the locals discount to the Observatory just because. (The older man at the burger place also having recommended the Butterfly Museum as the perfect, peaceful rainy day activity, and it is pouring.)

Jack, the bar tender at the other Irish bar who recommends the Smithwicks pints and the Irish nachos that we find to be a wicked good combination. Something about the corned beef and Irish cheddar and the way it blends with the silky smoothness of the Smithwicks at noon on Super Bowl Sunday in the rain. Makes us forget that walking around in ankle deep rain water barefoot on Duval is probably extending a warm invitation to disease and infection in their most potent forms.

The cool guy at Paradise Tattoo who deftly gives Scott a 50th birthday tattoo on his well formed shoulder in thirty minutes while great 80's music plays on the radio, and who allows me to step close enough to the art in progress to take photos to text to the kids at home. And who offers to tattoo my hip again with something meaningful to me and Scott. Even though we do not return to get it. Mostly because I do not want to remove myself from social circulation long enough to get it. A lotus flower would have been pretty, though.

Rob, the bar tender at The Mad Rooster who recommends the Rebel Rye to Scott while I am in the restroom and Scott asks what they have that his girlfriend with the hankering for a hoppy beer would like. A good strong rye hopped beer is just the thing on Super Bowl Sunday. For me and for Scott, whose shoulder is raw and stinging.

All the people we meet who hail from all over God's green Earth who want to get to know us, who asks out our lives and kids and hobbies, who want to know what brought us here, and who assume we were husband and wife. All of these folks who have distinct opinions and desires about the teams and the outcome of the Super Bowl but who have absolutely no interest at all in politics. Mitt who? President o' what? What's a Gingrich? It's a nice breather from the constant barrage of attacks and opinions we'd been subject to Up North.

The folks at the hotel restaurant who treat us like royalty for patronizing their establishment. It's good to be where everybody knows your name. Even if its because you assume the waitresses are swooning over Scott and hoping to poison my food to get me out of the way.

Scott and I eventually head back to the hotel after hours and hours on Duval in the rain. We shower and take a nap and rise for the game. It is a rowdy crowd with a mixed fan base and lots of alcohol flowing in brimming bloodstreams. Madonna is a real crowd pleaser.

But in the end, Scott and I finish the game with roadies in Styrofoam cups in or jammies snuggled in our bed.

As it should be. That is what vacation is for.