"We're going to need a bigger boat" the man muttered, surveying the sea ahead from the flying bridge. Captain Gill Eagan, his graying hair tucked under a battered greek fisherman's, could not have know the full portent of his statement, but he would soon learn.

The yacht Scapegoat cruised towards the undulating mass of yellow. Soon, the few crewmen on deck could make out the distictive octagonal shapes of emergency life rafts, apparently bound togeather. Each raft seemed filled to capacity with well dressed but clearly helpless occupants.

It should be observed that in situations like these the strangeness of human fashioin choices are most clearly displayed. Captain Egan, dressed, as he were, in bright white boat shoes, white slacks and pressed white shirt, and, slightly at odds with the rest of the outfit, the stained, crumpled, off-white cap, none the less exuded an air of control and capability. Anyone dressed in that way would, for the simple reason that, on order to dress in such a manner, one must actually possess those qualities. An uncontrolable and incapable person would be unable to button the buttons, or restrain himself from removing the starched canvas shoes and throwing them at his fellow humans.

The induviduals in the rafts, however, exemplified the negative image, both figurativly and literally, of the captain. The castaways were all dressed in formal evening were, black tuxedos and dark formal gowns. And as a group (with the exception of a single raft harboring the carefully segregated, white coated waitstaff of what must have been a particulary wet dinner party, but thats beside the point), this well dress crowd emmited a pungent miasma of varried charater traits.

Some smelled of greed, this group defined among the men as those favoring the common tie to the bow tie. This is neccesary as it is too difficult to slightly loosen a bowtie, as might be neccesary for a glutton to gulp down a meal. Others emmited the odor ignorance. These could be catagorized among both sexs by the apparent lack of jewelry. Only a particulary ignorant induvidual would attend a life raft dinner party without at least bringing a watch. And there was even a whiff of intelegence (stonger from the region with the white coated waitstaff, but again, they do not come into our story). A carefull observer would notice that the regions in which this aroma contained a proportionally higher number of passengers wearing heavy boots with woolen socks (admitedly, though well dressed not all the cast aways were equally concious of the particulars of formal dress etiquette). Obviously anyone with the prescence of mind to bring footwear suitable for any climate was either a) intelligent, or b) an alumnus of a previous liferaft dinner party (they really could go just about anywhere).

The yacht slowed, and crewmen began to help dinner guests (as well as the waitstaff who do not impact this story) climb aboard...

To Be Continued... With more insightful observances of the human condition and additional information about the white coated induviduals who do not play any part in this tale...

I recall a vivid dream from my childhood in which I and my school friends were soldiers in the American Civil War. A brutally intesnse dream, in which we had charged with, bayonets fixed, to capture a stone bridge. Many months later, I woke with a start from another dream. Moments before, I had been an old man, surrounded by others like me. There had been a stong sadness in the dream, as I and my comrades retrned to visit the bridge we had fought so hard to capture those many years before.