Who says I can't swim?

Well, the ukulele killer has spoken. So has Kynephew. Thanks for the spelling lesson. I think her foot must have glanced off my ukulele and hit me in the head. I was a spelling champion before that trip.

Anyway, I spoke with my (evil) ukulele killing sister after she read the blog. She said I should have blogged about the time I tried to drown her. Of course she remembers it differently than I do. At no time in my life have I ever said or thought I wanted to drown her. Well...

She says she tried to keep me out of the water that day but I remember that she was so busy with all of the boys at the swimming pool that she wasn't paying attention to me. That was her job, too. I was just a little boy! Our parents told her to take care of me!

Where we lived probably has one of the largest swimming pools in the world. (At least it seems that way). My evil sister and I spent most of our summers at that pool. I think I had learned to swim by the time I was five. At least that's how I remember it.

On the day in question I decided to swim out to the island that was in the deeper water. No sweat. I swam out and climbed on the island to rest. There wasn't much to do there so I decided to go back. About halfway back I got a cramp or something and began to sink (she says I got tired). Well, my (evil) sister must have seen me because she actually came out to get me.

Now you have to understand that I was just a little boy and drowning was not something I wanted to do. I quickly figured out that all I had to do to keep from drowning was stand on her shoulders. The only problem was that put her under water, making it difficult for her to breathe, to say the least. But, I was finally OK.

For some reason my solution did not agree with her and she kept trying to push me off. I guess the lifeguard finally took his eyes off the girls and saw me. At least some big guy came out and helped me swim back to the side of the pool. My (evil) sister floated up and swam to the side. She has been giving me trouble about this all of my life. I don't understand her problem.

On the serious side, Earnestine reminded me of a trip we took to California a few years ago. We were in a canoe on the Russian River and came under a bridge just before the point where we were to beach the canoe. The bridge had an island similar to the pool and there were several kids just coming off that island to swim back to shore.

Well, as Yogi Berra would say, it was deja vu all over again. One of the smaller kids began to struggle in the water and we could see he wasn't going to make it. We got the canoe near him and I stuck a paddle out for him to hold while we pulled him in. Well, he was scared and decided to grab the canoe instead. I could see that was going to cause us to tip but somehow managed to get him to stop and we got him in with a paddle. I'm just glad he didn't have to stand on my shoulders.