The Naturalist

This is a story about a man's visit to the lakefront.

While walking across the waterfront, I came to rest at the rocky shore. Before I knew it, I was immediately confronted by the insolence of young birds.
I was so happy to be living in the good part of town. The high trees. The personable characters. The beavers.
What? Beavers? Who brings beavers to a water fight?
I couldn’t believe it myself, but there it was. A small beaver. Building a dam to nowhere.
“You’d better catch a pizza,” I said to myself.
Suddenly, turning around, I was immediately sucker-punched by a young man with mohawk. He couldn’t have been any older than sixteen if he tried.
In my mind was playing the sound of yon Gandalf disclaiming to the demon, “You shall not pass!”
I hit the ground and that was it for a while. The funniest thing about this situation was that I trained as an Olympic boxer in my youth. A “junior” Olympic boxer, I must say.
My old coach, Mr. Bakersfield, was an amenable type, always trying his best.
However, he told us repeatedly in our lessons that we must resist the urge to commit the ultimate sin, the sucker-punch.
“Boxing is a sport of honor and respect,” he would say. “There is no room, now or in the hereafter, for a sucker punch in a pugilist row.”
Mr. Bakersfield was a good man. A very good man. Just don’t sucker-punch him. That was a lesson that I learned a little too early in my boxing career.
Back to the story.
I woke up on the waterfront, looking like a fool. A beaver had built a bridge across my forehead, leaving me looking like a character from the film Stargate.
Already wary about my being seen as being out of place, I risked a sanction with the housing department by removing the bridge, dusting the bridge dust off, and standing up.
Amazingly, no one even seemed to notice that I had been sucker-punched! As I continued to walk, it became obvious to me that if I didn’t want to get sucker-punched I was going to have to modify my policy on not sucker-punching.
What was an effective defense from sucker-punching? Was there any? Any serious defense from it?
I sat at the Shoreline Protection Project, looking out upon the undulating waves. I thanked myself for not falling directly on my $2,500 Apple Watch Phone, a full flat-screen phone that wrapped itself neatly around the wrist, without hinges.
Because the watch phone was wrapped around my ankle, it was clearly out of the firing line of the sucker-punch that I had so unceremoniously suffered.
As I sat there, overlooking the water as I played Minecraft on my watch phone, I saw her. The most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life. She had a beauty that was uncommon, yet natural.
I turned to abscond with her but then realized that she had come there to meet with her bodybuilder boyfriend.
I hope he doesn’t sucker-punch.