jet lag

It was our last days of summer youth.  We'd recently graduated high school and had few obligations.  My good friend, Ingrid, would be off soon to onboard at West Point Military Academy.  I would soon be doing less rigorous things, but on that particular day, we were pretty carefree.

That summer after high school, Ingrid had wanted to "get in shape" for West Point and sort of recruited me to join her in pre boot-camp boot-camp.  Yeah, okay, why not?

We bicycled, we ran, we didn't drink any alcohol...

And we canoed.

Ingrid's neighbor friends had a good sized canoe they let us borrow whenever we wanted.  I drove an old pickup truck with room in the bed for the neighbor canoe, so a few days during the week, we would drive up to the reservoir and paddle around before I'd go off to my restaurant busgirl job.

We'd paddle out to the middle of the lake, boot-camp style, then languish in the sun, eating chips and drinking pop.  The pop and chips probably canceled out any benefit of the paddling, but it's good to have balance.

As often happens in Colorado summertime, a violent thunderstorm approached on that afternoon as we languished among our Doritos.  Seeing the dark clouds rolling in, we roused ourselves out of our sunbathed-and-monosodium-glutamate-induced lethargy, and took up our oars.

We were making good time getting back to shore, however, the lake surface began getting choppy, and we began floundering a bit.  The storm did not flounder but continued its relentless approach.

Motor boats - our companions on the lake that day - were zipping by toward shore as Ingrid and I paddled away in our suddenly realized slow, exposed craft.  I glanced to Ingrid behind me to see her determined look:  her face sweaty and focused, her hair wild in the wind and humidity.  I thought, "better her than me going off to West Point".

Dark clouds made it seem like it was almost nighttime even though it was mid-afternoon.  Would we make it back to shore before things got really crazy? 

But then, alas, a good sized waterski boat came up behind us, and I heard its engine slow.  It was driven by Jet, the high school football coach (yeah, he really went by "Jet").

"YOU GIRLS NEED A TOW BACK TO SHORE?", he called all masculinely in his typical shirtless presentation.  Maybe a slight smirk on his thickly mustached face.

And I was all, "Oh thank gawd, let's get the hell outta here", as raindrops began pelting.

But not before Ingrid raised her sweat stained wild haired head and replied, "NO, WE'RE GOOD".

I looked at Ingrid.  I looked at Jet. I resumed my fervored paddling.

Jet hit his throttle and left us to make our way back under our own power.  I glanced again back at Ingrid.

"That chauvinist pig isn't gonna be the one to save our asses!"

And with that, we saved our own asses.  

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Linking up this week with Mama Kat for the prompt:

4. Write a blog post inspired by the word: flounder.

 
along with a little...
2. Tell us about a random act of kindness that you witnessed or were a part of.

since he DID stop to ask, and we actually did survive.