A Hair Raising, Skin Scraping Sunday

Late Sunday afternoon our "good" friends Mike & Carrie called & invited us to go out on the boat with them for a little while (you'll understand later why they have playfully been relegated to "good" friends, I still love them I'm just now questioning whether they think they are named in my will). My initial reaction was to say no because that's what I do when something is outside my comfort zone. I have only been out on a boat once in my life & it was a party barge that my sedate, completely non-outdoorsy dad was in charge of & incidental it was his 1st time on the lake w/ a boat so we barely puttered. I'm fine with water, I just want to be able to see what's at the bottom(that means pool play only). Blame it on B rated 80's movies if you like but scary things exist where there is water you can't see through. So still I'm envisioning sitting on a boat in the middle of the lake doing nothing, how much fun can that be w/o a book right? NO we get out there & right off the bat they want me to put my kids in the lake, WHAT! So maybe I'm a bit uptight, who knew. After much prodding I actually lowered my body into the brackish water of Pat Mayse Lake, ick! I thought I had done good, but even after these past few years of friendship I still have yet to grasp the fact that Miss Carrie's new mission in life is to jar me out of my comfort zone, it seems to have become some sort of game. I will admit we were collectively quite proud of me for jumping that hurdle, but the best is yet to come. My dear children start begging to ride the tube, so J goes 1st as he has the most experience, which I didn't even know about (this is just the 1st of my parental shortcomings in this story). He looks like he is having a blast, so really how bad can it be? Next all 3 kids get on the tube & go for a ride which I was of course very nervous about, this was L's 1st tube ride & I just kept seeing her fly through the air w/o the greatest of ease if you know what I mean.

Regrettably I didn't get a pic of this because nervous nelly here couldn't take her eyes off the tube long enough to grab the camera.

Then it was A's turn & she had a blast, evidently they are quite the daredevils, who knew? Both my olders wanted wild rides &hung on for dear life, until J flipped the tube up in the air & went flying. Quite a site to see.

Then of course Miss L decided that she needed a solo ride which immediately send my poor Mama's heart into overdrive, but you have to remember at this point I myself had yet to experience this & had no idea what to expect. We took it really slow (she kept giving the slow down signal, even though we were at the slowest speed,good girl!), but still seemed to be having a blast. At least until the tube took off all the skin on her knees & elbows & reopened her scootering wounds from the weekend before. This girl is battle scarred, let me tell you!

So then comes my turn. How do you say no when all the kids have done it right? I'm actually trying to overcome fears & do new things so this seemed, for a moment, to be a great opportunity to do just that & the kids had so much fun. NO, within 5 short seconds I knew I had made the mistake of a lifetime, I was about to leave my children motherless. I did not know it at the time, but all of a sudden the lake was whitecapping, I had the roughest ride of everyone, great! Since going to the lake was last minute I had failed to take my mascara off before we left, 1st big mistake. Immediately I have black fire running from my eyes & I'm too terrified to let go & wipe it away. It was like being thrown onto a bull having never been taught how to bull ride, I kid you not. My body was flying off that tube like a fish on land & my second thought, after Dear God what have I gotten myself into, was do people with implants really do this?! I know, random right? I'm immediately screaming like a banshee (think Darby O'Gill & the Little People) but in staccato, eyy,eyy,eyy,eyy,eyy, broken each time my generous body slammed back down onto the tube. I'm sure the other lake goers all scrambled for their video cameras at this point. I fully expect to be the next big thing on youtube. Maybe a movie deal will come of this, stranger things have happened. Anywho..there were several minutes that had I not been too afraid to let go I would have simply jumped off & waited to be rescued. There is a signal that lets the driver, who I truly believe was reveling in my predicament, know that you've had enough, but that would necessitate letting go of the handles which I knew would leave me air born & take me straight to Jesus w/o passing go or collecting $200 so I just hung on for dear life & prayed! At the end of my harrowing ordeal, which goes through many other phases but would take a novella to describe I promptly asked "do you really do this for fun?!" Which of course elicited gales of laughter from the boat riders who had not just risked their neck I might add. My fingers had to be pried from the handles & my legs would not work so of course I fell into the lake, which further amused my fellow lakers. So I consider myself a survivor of a near death experience, I came away from this with a renewed relationship with Christ (no kidding, I know he brought me back from the brink of death on this day ), a renewed commitment to my kids (what kind of mother lets her kids do something for the 1st time w/o trying it out herself 1st?!) & a strong conviction that my "good friends" are truly unaware that they are NOT named in my will. We will rectify that immediately, I have no desire to be almost killed anytime in the near future. Thankfully no one from our boat picked up a camera, that's one thing I would NOT want captured on camera for all posterity!