It was an especially warm afternoon in the upper 70s (ha!), so Patrick and Sarah and I decided to break out the floats and attempt a “floatilla” for the first time since the start of our vacation. Patrick scanned the dock for the best place to lower himself onto his float and realized the ladder was too unwieldy for a smooth takeoff. The only alternative was to somehow hop onto the float from the dock’s edge, which rests a solid 18 inches above the water. He bravely decided to give it a go and lowered the float into the water. Without pausing to think too much, he hoisted himself off the dock and crashed onto the float like a bowling ball, cross-legged and facing the wrong way. Like a good sister, I pointed at him and cackled.
“Why did you get on it backwards?!” Sarah asked.
“How else could I have done it?” Patrick responded, paddling furiously and tipping dangerously to the right.
The float suddenly flipped and Patrick tumbled into the water. This was funny enough as it was, but the funniest part was watching him try to get back on. As I sit here remembering it, I am giggling all over again. Every time he gained purchase, the float would flip him off again with a big splash, and he would pop up like a buoy, his arms flailing and his glasses cockeyed on his face.
The contrast was stark between Sarah’s reaction as his wife and my reaction as his sister:
Sarah: “Are you okay??? Please tell us if you need help!”
Me: “BAHAHAHAHAHA. Can we sell tickets to this? Somebody pop some popcorn!”
Eventually he figured it out and stabilized himself on the float. At this point we had secured the ladder properly, so I wiped the tears from my eyes and sashayed over to the dock’s edge, ready to show him how it’s done.
As a three-time winner of the Least Valuable Vacationer award, I am a seasoned float launcher. I slipped my feet through the hole in the foot of the float, walked down a couple rungs of the ladder and then gracefully lowered myself onto the raft, pushing off from the dock with my toes. I waved at Mom and Patrick as I floated away, self-satisfied and serene.
Then, without warning, a great POP echoed across the lake. Generations of lake-dwellers will tell their children of the great POP of July 20th, 2021. Mom tells me that my confident smirk evaporated in an instant. My float deflated faster than I thought possible, and before I knew it, I was the flailing, sputtering, chagrined Dunnevant sibling.
I can often hear Nanny’s voice in my head, reciting one of her favorite Scriptures: “Pride goeth before a fall!”
Quite literally, indeed.
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