And Its Menacing Cousin, the Screeching Halt
By J. Lee Austin
Staying true to our recent theme of Close Calls, today’s meandering narrative evokes the reckless blundering of my younger days, personified in numerous foolish escapades on the water. While nearly getting killed on the roadways is certainly bonafide dramatic, it pales in comparison to the boat crash that almost sent me to heaven, or the place where people of my ilk go. Ok stop saying ilk, it’s weird.
Hearkening back to those halcyon days of Infinite Invincibility, we had no fear, especially any silly fear of water. Skiing was a major part of our recreational program and we did it every chance we got. It was a great way to get some exercise and sunshine, but for our primitive purposes it was mostly about the beer and bikinis, not necessarily in that order.
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A high performance Slalom Ski could easily represent a metaphor for things that are exciting to the point of being deadly … you know, like a rattlesnake round-up … or shining the light of truth on a Clinton death count. Incidentally, if I die suddenly, let it be known I was not suicidal. Or even depressed. Ok, a little tri-polar maybe.
The thrill of making deep cuts on glassy water is intoxicating. Living on the figurative edge of pulling out of a massive G-force hole … and the literal edge of the ski holding in the sharp turn … marks the razor thin difference between exhilaration and jolting shock. Lose the edge at that speed and bad things happen in a blink on the brink. Maybe I should have paid more heed to Molly Hatchet, who sang about Flirtin’ With Disaster. Nah, what do what rock stars know about death anyway. Ok ignore that tangent. And all future tangents for that matter.
When you “catch an edge” … the soft, caressing water in which you had previously been serenely floating, turns violently into a slab of concrete that slaps the body with extreme prejudice, maybe even malice. Your bell is ringing as you gasp for air and wonder if the ribs had punctured the lungs. The sudden impact brutality was the scariest thing ever, such that you know someday you will have to write about it. Pop goes the weasel, here we are. Writing and weaseling our way out of doing actual productive or meaningful work. Dang the torpedoes, full speed ahead.
I think it was dead-pan comedian Rita Rudner who once joked that, “I think I would like water skiing if I could separate it from being dragged around by a boat.” Rita’s comic trepidation notwithstanding, water sports in which giddy people are getting dragged around by boats is so popular that in the heat of summer it’s hard to swing a dead catfish around bodies of water without hitting one. Some say it doesn’t take much to entertain us. Lol (for those who have the entertaining proclivity to laugh out loud.)
Parenthetically, folks intuitively know that skiing is risky business, but often don’t recognize the dangers of kneeboarding. I didn’t either until I caught a front edge and had my face slammed without ceremony into the aforementioned slab.
Nothing quite compares to having your eyelids peeled back as far as they will go, and then peeled some more. Once you confirm your lids are still attached to your face, you wonder how your neck did not break in two. Or three. Or how your cerebral blood vessels did not blow right out. Neither Humpty or Dumpty would do very well in such a sub-optimal environment, I’m sure of it.
Hard to think of much else that compares in sheer gut-wrenching dysphoria. We tend to take eyelids for granted. So until they are rammed to the back of their socket, leaving their poor globes naked to the river, you really don’t think about them. It’s additionally creepy to lay there floating and wondering if your eyeballs might have ruptured. And then puzzling how they did not. Probably a physics thing that I wouldn’t understand.
Reminds me of the time I took a direct hit to the right orbit from a hard struck tennis ball, with the ensuing pain making me want to upchuck the cookies. As fate and the guardian angels would have it, I was playing doubles with … not just one, but two … opthalmologists on the court. Talk about an eye opener.
Back to our water follies. Taking dangerous and stupid to the next level, after partying all day at the friends’ lake house and engaging in the requisite redneckian barbecue activities, we headed back across the lake … at night.
The absence of light and the driver’s cowboy sized Bud-thirst may have had something to do with what happened next. In retrospect, he should not have been operating a tricycle on training wheels, let alone a high powered ski boat with the hammer down. And definitely not a hammer.
Take that amount of ludicrous, double it, square it and run it up the flagpole to see yours truly and his girlfriend perched up front on the very bow of the boat, grinning like raccoons licking a whiskey bottle, all while zooming across a black lake at breakneck speed. Did I mention it was dark. Even the moon and stars went into hiding, unable to watch the wanton witlessness.
It happened so fast there was no time to react, let alone flinch. When the boat slammed into the sand bar, the hapless bow riders instantly backflipped, both sticking the landing in ankle deep water. The crazy part was the boat deflection, which was far enough to the side that the rapidly spinning, suddenly airborne propeller narrowly missed all, leaving no chummy bits or gushing blood in the water at all. Call it a Christmas miracle in July. I wouldn’t disagree.
Once we agreed we were not dead or hurt, we sloshed over to the boat, where the wife and daughter were sobbing bigly with mental trauma, but were physically fine. The driver on the other hand had suffered a nasty, 3 inch gash on the chin. Being slung-shot onto the sharp corner of a walk-through windshield will do that sort of thing. Considering the breathtaking ferocity of the stop, it was a real wonder there was not more wounding. Shoot, I’ve seen ruptured spleens on my dissection table for less.
The lessons here are so obvious they really need no further exposition. Y’all just try to remember to be careful while you’re having fun out there, lest you end up with hairy tales of mutton-headed antics taken to an embarrassing extreme.
Believe it or not, there are more of these death defying anecdotes of my life yet to be written. For those playing along at home, you may run out of fingers and toes on which to count them. If that should happen, feel free to recruit more digits to this boutique stack.
Stay tuned for more moronic madness and if any of you have any crazy stories of your own, we would love to read them. If nothing else, it might make me feel less like a crash test dummy. Feel free to post them in the comment section, the dumber the better.
Here’s to surviving another year on blessed and borrowed time. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all, especially my Beloved Readers!
~~ j ~~
“Ok, so what’s the speed of dark?” ~~ Steven Wright
