It just happens the restaurant lies in the same mini-mall as does a forlorn reminder of my financial gullibility. In particular an empty SCUBA dive shop, with PADI signs still in the windows.
This shop was once the pride and joy of the now former husband of a family friend. A realization of his dream. My wife and I were moved to help by providing an early investment, a seed as it were from which the business flowered.
Our friend ran his Dive Shop for nearly four years, with ups and downs, but always with one happy idea in mind- to teach as many people as he could to 'blow bubbles' with the fishes and enjoy a small piece of the 70% of mother earth we landlocked beings never see. I joined in the spirit and learned to Dive, and spent many happy hours reliving a childhood dream of being Mike Nelson in 'Sea Hunt', only without the sparring with undersea villains complication. But nothing that good lasts unchanged forever.
For several reasons, but not least the burst economic Bubble of 2008, the shop died a sudden death, leaving a hole in the tight-knit dive community, scattering the shop's own clan of divers, and ending a marriage.
The Dive Shop has remained empty since July of 2008, even located as it is on a busy section of a major thoroughfare. The two shops on either side of it are now empty too.
I still 'blow bubbles' but not nearly as often, and from what I've heard, the former owner of the shop, a serious, professional diver, hasn't been under much either. But that's the way of disappointments, they can sour things for you if you let them. And it's hard not to let them.
I imagine right now in America there are quite a few people nursing disappointments. Not all of them will have a painful reminder like an empty shop, although some might have worse. I hope not.
And I hope anyone who is disappointed on their birthday has a better time next year.
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