Turning Point by Don Taco

                                                                                           

      Turning Point       

by Don Taco

  The assignment was to write a short story that has two turning points, a major one and a minor one. It didn't specify what order they occurred in. And I was fresh out of ideas. Wasn't even sure, in literary terms,what a turning point is. I've been out of academia a great many years, and I wasn't a great student of literature even when I was supposedly studying it. God alone knows how I ended up in the Arts, much less as a songwriter and a teller of short tales. So, I cheated. I fired up ChatPCH, which is a lesser known cousin of ChatGPT that is strictly geared to those who live along the Pacific Ocean. Have you ever noticed that every 'C' in pacific ocean is pronounced differently? ChatPCH knows the lyrics to every surfer song ever recorded. Not just by Jan and Dean or the Beach Boys. Did you know there's an entire genre of music produced by people who love the sound of 'surf guitar' such as Dick Dale, but neither live near nor celebrate the ocean? It's called Desert Surf. It's a category name that had to be invented to describe something that developed but didn't fit previously established genres. Similar to the category of Celtic Soul that had to be invented to describe Van Morrison.

  So I asked ChatPCH about literary turning points. After a brief but invigorating discussion of John Mayall's genre-bending brilliant acoustic live album, and an equally brief but far less interesting foray into the Industrial Revolution, ChatPCH suggested that I consider that moment when a rippin' breaker crosses paths with its own reflection off the jetty, setting up diffraction patterns that make your ride unpredictable and sometimes damned interesting. Cowabunga. Dude!