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Posted by dustin on January 29, 2022 at 01:27:54

Today my phone buzzed with a notification from Facebook. I'm hardly ever on facebook because its hot garbage, but I saw this one was from the mother of a good friend of mine. My friend Grant's birthday was today. Grant and I were neighbors growing up, were in the same class all through high school. Kind of drifted apart after high school but we still stay in touch. Anyway his mom posted the usual cringey Happy Birthday post on FB for Grant, and posted a bunch of pictures of him from over the years. One of the pictures included me, and that's What I'm going to talk about here.

Back sometime in middle school we had a field trip to a summer camp for a day. I think it was a YMCA camp maybe an hour or so from school. I remember it being an absolutely beautiful day -warm without being too hot, blue sky with a few white fluffy clouds, light breeze, just perfect. In the morning we did a bunch of different activities, then had lunch. Then they took us down to the pond where there were a bunch of canoes and told us that we'd be taking the canoes out for a bit. I'd never gone in a canoe before so I thought that would be pretty fun. Now I want to explain that this field trip wasn't supposed to involve swimming or anything. If I remember right they suggested that we pack a clean set of clothes just in case we got dirty but definitely nobody packed a swimsuit or towel or anything like that. So I was kind of suprised they'd have us go canoeing. They gave us bright orange lifejackets to wear, then the counselors pulled the canoes up to the dock and we all got in. I ended up pairing up with my friend Grant. The counselors kept reminding us to be careful and do exactly what they told us to do or otherwise we'd end up falling in the lake. So I was super careful climbing into the canoe and getting us paddled out into the middle of the lake.

Before long I noticed a bit of water was sloshing around inside the bottom of the canoe, but not enough to really worry about, I figured it had probably always been there and now that we were moving it was just sloshing around. A few minutes later, the water got a little deeper, and slowly kept getting deeper. Grant and I were both sitting on the metal seats in the canoe with our knees bent to keep our feet out of the water. "Uh Grant, I think we got a problem here." Grant was sitting in front of me and turned around "Yeah, we're sinking!" Grant had a huge grin on his face and clearly thought this was a great adventure. The water kept getting deeper and I realized it was futile to try to avoid getting wet, so I splashed my feet down into the ankle-deep water, which immediately soaked through my shoes and socks. A second later I watched Grant shrug and do the same thing. "Wasn't planning on going for a swim today," I noted. "Me neither." Grant and I worked on paddling the canoe back towards dry land, and one of the counselors paddled up near us. "What did you guys do?" he asked. "We're taking on water," I said, laughing. The counselor seemed to agree that we should paddle towards shore... but before long the water was up to our calves, then our knees, then we were completely swamped with the water up to our necks.

My thoughts the whole time were that this was completely awesome. I was wearing black sneakers, white socks, blue jeans that were just a bit too big for me, and a navy blue t-shirt. Oddly I remember the feeling of the t-shirt being particularly awesome - it was a newer t-shirt and a little heavier material than normal, and I absolutely loved the way it looked and felt, glistening with the water. I loved how my jeans were floating around my legs in my water, and how my shoes were completely full of water. This was probably the first time I was soaked completely clothed, shoes and all, and in public, and it was an incredible feeling. What I also loved was having my entire class notice and laugh at me! I was kind of surprised at just how entertained people were. I mean, there was another time when I got dunked into a dunk tank fully clothed and I think people got more of a kick out of seeing me in a swamped canoe than they did dunking me in a dunk tank.

We made it to shore and Grant, who was wearing shorts, a t-shirt, gym shoes and socks, hopped out of the canoe and I think on purpose tripped and fell and got completely soaked from head to toe in the water. I went to climb out of the canoe, and the water was a little deeper at the back end, and I unintentionally fell in over my head, but my lifejacket immediately caught me, and with one of the counselors help we pulled the swamped canoe of the water. Then the counselors teachers and chaperones all started bombarding us. "Why would you swamp your canoe? Do you have extra clothes with you? What will your parents think? What were you thinking? Hope you enjoy detention! Did you even bring a towel?" While this was happening, one of the counselors was tipping the canoe over to dump out the water, and announced that he located a hole in the bottom of the boat (shocking, right?!) Meanwhile, Grant's mom was actually there as a chaperone and saw the whole thing unfold, and walked over laughing at us, she seemed to think it was as funny as we did. Once the counselors realized that it wasn't our fault, and saw that Grant's mom wasn't going to get mad, the tone changed a bit to, "I'm so sorry we gave you a leaky boat! We can drive into town and buy you some dry clothes and shoes! What size are you? Are you hurt at all? Cold? Let me find you guys a towel...." I remember Grant's mom loudly saying "Excuse Me!" to cut off all the babbling, and then declaring something to the effect of, "It's just water. They're boys. They'll dry. They'll be fine!" That was enough to make everyone realize that it was safe to laugh about the experience. We were told to take our shoes off and let them dry in the sun, but otherwise just went on with the rest of the day in our soaked clothes. Another favorite part was when everyone else came in from the lake and my class huddle around me and Grant to tease us about getting soaked. One friend of mine gave us a pat on the back and said "man that sucks that you got drenched. And you're wearing jeans! Those will take forever to dry!" I thought it was awesome, I was loving every minute of it, the only thing I was worried about was that it might show just how MUCH I was enjoying it, if you know what I mean. Fortunately that didn't become an issue but it was a close call!

We did have another couple hours before the bus ride back to school and I did realize that it might have been nice to change into dry clothes. I did shove an extra t-shirt and shorts into my backpack that morning, but I didn't bring extra underwear, socks or shoes, so it didn't seem worth it to change if I'd still be wearing wet underwear. It got a little uncomfortable with my pants starting to dry a bit but my underwear still being wet. Also my shoes didn't really dry that much, so when I went to put them back on they were still quite damp and I didn't really like that sensation. So I learned for the future that after about an hour or so it would be good to change into dry clothes and to bring extra shoes if I got my shoes wet. Live and learn.

When we got back to school my mom had arrived to pick me up and the teacher walked over with me to explain why my clothes and shoes were drenched. My mom wasn't fazed at all and just said something like, "I send my son to a summer camp, I don't get too surprised that he comes back wet and filthy. As long as he didn't break any rules, its no problem." The teacher looked very relieved that there wasn't any yelling or anything. On the car ride home my mom asked if I brought extra clothes like I was supposed to and why didn't I change into them. "I didn't bring extra underwear..." I mumbled, and my mom just laughed and that was the end of the conversation.

Anyway to tie this back to the Facebook post from this morning - during this, someone had snapped a few pictures of me and Grant paddling our swamped canoe with water up to our necks, and Grant's mom had apparently held on to it. In school that photo made it into the yearbook and the slideshow they made for the 8th grade graduation and stuff like that, which I thought was totally awesome! Honestly having people have a good laugh at me, over something I was THORUOGHLY enjoying, just made it that much more fun!!


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