I call him Pelican Man.

 I've been planning my next semester abroad in Florence and am lucky enough to have found a travel writing course offered at the Florence University of the Arts. As with any aspiring writer, be fiction or non-fiction, I am at an insufficiency of words to express the excitement I have for this immense opportunity. When I was in Puerto Rico all I wanted to do was write and write I did. In retrospect of the trip I regret not interviewing a man I meet on a beach the locals call 'Crash Boat' in the Southwestern part of the island.

I call him Pelican Man.

( I will post a picture on my blog to honor his title)

 He wanders the shores of Crash Boat with a box of Ritz crackers in one hand and the other fist full of shark teeth necklaces . Searching the beach for anyone wearing Nigel Thornbury (90's anyone??) styled hats or misusing tanning oil, he approaches the gringos and the ostensible tourists and offers them a deal.

I immediately catch his eye, don't worry I don't normally make that assumption about my effect on men. Or it might by the point-and-shoot Cannon camera in my hand that he really is interested in. I'm wearing a loose-fitting sundress and faux floral patterned Ray Bans. My attempt at seeming trendy inevitably branded me as American.

He confidently walks over to me and the second he says "hello" I know I have failed the Boricua test.
He shakes the hand holding the shark teeth necklaces and says "look at these necklaces! Real shark teeth." I smile and fake interest, wondering if he knows just as I do that those teeth were not found on Puerto Rican shores.

In an effort to please Senor Ramos, my high school Spanish teacher, I reply "No gracias."

Nailed it.

He points to a group of Pelicans standing on the vibrantly painted benches not to far away from where I'm sitting.

"Do you want to see them dance like Michael Jackson?"

My friend and I laugh and tell him "maybe later."

After exploring the cliffs around crash boat I end up back along the main part of the beach taking more gratuitous pictures of palm trees to obnoxiously send to my friends stuck in the filibuster of New England's Winter. I see Pelican Man.

"Mike! Mike," he yells in a direction only to suggest that Mike is, in fact, a Pelican. He throws a Ritz cracker in the air which a pelican intercepts before the cracker hits the sand.

As two tourists gather around. I hear him say "Do you want to see Mike dance?"

The man dressed in a floral print shirt that screams gringo gives Pelican Man two dollars.

Let the show begin.