Ahoy! Whale Overboard!!!

I've had a couple of peeps ask me to elaborate on something I mentioned in my last entry in regards to dangling off a boat cleat from a thong. As with everything detailed in Deep Thoughts, this actually did happen. My family has a cottage up on a lake. It's kind of a free-for-all up there in the summer. Friends and family coming and going, your garden variety all-hell-breaking-loose all day long but generally followed by a pause in the pre-dinner hour as people are usually getting ready to go out and then mixing up some cocktails. I embrace the cocktail hour. It's my favorite time of the day, and not just because there is booze involved. It's the first truly relaxing time of the day when you have kids and dogs on a lake. You're running them to camp or finding tennis racquets or making sure they're not drowning or keeping the dog from running through your mother's house soaking wet and shaking. Not very Zen. I like to sit on the porch and sip a gin and tonic and shoot the shit with my dad or read a book. It's nice. On the day in question I was freshly showered, had suited up in the local uniform of a Lilly Pulitzer skirt, cute little top and Jack Rogers Navajo sandals. I believe I was in fact sitting on the porch enjoying both a drink and a book when it was announced to me that I needed to come be a spotter on the boat as the kids wanted to go tubing. What the fuck????? We don't tube during cocktail hour! That is against protocol and is wrong as a general matter of course. Maybe these people WERE raised in barns. I'm not going. Apparently, yes I am. So having defiantly transfered my drink to a "go" cup, I find myself onboard watching my son, who is around five at the time, and making sure he's able to get back on the boat alright when he's done with his ride. Long story but at one point it appeared to me that he was caught in a wave and was being carried uncomfortably away from the boat. Being a mother (with a couple of cocktails in her) I decided that I would jump in, clothing be damned, and save my baby. "Heroic Local Woman Thinks Nothing of Self and Saves Child in Quick Thinking Act". From what I was saving him I'm not sure as he had a life-vest on (of course) but my maternal instincts were triggered and I took quick and decisive action and jumped. And then got caught by my thong on a boat cleat. Turns out I was the one that needed saving. "Idiotic Local Woman Has Too Many Cocktails and Makes Complete Jackass of Self, Exposing Herself in Process". How that thing didn't snap I have NO idea as this was in the era that preceded my discovery that my thyroid was no longer functioning properly and I was kind of a heifer in spite of my rather vigorous workout routine. That's another story altogether. The worst part is that my sixteen-year old nephew had to help disentangle me. I think the poor lad is still in therapy. Needless to say, that was the last time I was asked to spot anybody during cocktail hour. Once again, method behind madness. Works like a charm.