Only on the Gulfshore

It was Carlson who caught me on the beach holding the baggie filled with seashells. "Since when did you ...?"

Carlson pointed at the Baggie.

"It's not what you think," I said.

"If it walks like a duck and it talks like a duck..."

"I don't collect seashells," I said.

"And yet ."

Carlson pointed at the Baggie again. There were maybe a dozen shells in the Baggie. All of them were coquinas. And all of them were pink.

"While it might appear as if I am collecting seashells, and while I have, indeed, been picking up seashells and placing them in this Baggie, I am not, nor have I ever been, a collector of seashells," I said.

"I have seen all I need to see," said Carlson.

And with that he was on his way, no doubt anxious to spread the news about what I was up to and ruin my good name.

I returned to the business at hand-namely, scouring the beach, looking for pink coquina shells. Not collecting them, mind you. Just picking them up and putting them in the Baggie.

I have been hanging out on Gulfshore beaches for the better part of 40 years and never have I been a collector of seashells. I know the names of many. I can tell a cowrie from a murex or a periwinkle from a conch. I like the idea that all those seashells exist. I have paid money to visit the Bailey-Matthews Shell Museum on Sanibel. I have even stopped to pick up shells on the beach and marvel over them, then I have returned them to their rightful spots so they might achieve whatever destiny it is that shells are put on this planet to achieve.

But collecting seashells? No way. In my mind, and in the mind of my friends like Carlson, that has always been a diversion reserved for 1) tourists or 2) people with way too much time on their hands who don't know how to waste it in more appropriate ways, like golfing or fishing or sailing.

Besides, you know how it can get with some people. They go a little too gaga over seashells. It starts off with something so innocent-say, a dozen or so mulberry whelks lovingly arranged on the back-porch rail in descending order of size-and the next thing you know they are turning them into seashell light switches and seashell picture frames and seashell lampshades.

What happened was this: One day, walking on the beach with my wife, I spotted a glint of pink in the sand and picked up the first coquina. I spotted another a few yards away. Then another. Half an hour later I had a handful of them.

"You know," my wife said, "it would be nice to have a bunch of these. I'd put them in a little dish and set them on the coffee table to remind me of our walks on the beach. A sweet little pile of pink."

So innocent .

Here's the thing about collecting seashells, er, picking up seashells on the beach and putting them in a Baggie: It becomes obsessive. Specialize in one particular type of shell and that's all you see. Start focusing on tiny pink coquinas and you focus on them to the exclusion of all else. You block out everything on the beach-dogs chasing Frisbees, kids building sandcastles, lightning striking the dune line.

Then your former pal Carlson approaches and introduces you to some out-of-town guests.

"This is Morris," Carlson says. "He collects seashells."

You smile, not making eye contact, reaching for a glint of pink in the sand.

"You oughta see our lampshades," you say.