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If my teenage stepdaughters ever ask me whether I misbehaved at their age, I’m going to have to admit that I did. Lord help me, did I ever.
But I’m also going to tell them that while my parents remain almost completely unaware of my adolescent hijinks, karma would end up taking its revenge on me several years later, in the form of the Great Hooch Tubing Fiasco of 2003.
It began when I convinced my parents to go inner tubing with my husband, stepdaughters and me down Georgia’s Chattahoochee River. I had been tubing many times before and remembered a tame and shallow stretch of water. But the Hooch we encountered that day was a raging river, swollen by a recent downpour. My parents watched in horror as dozens of inner tubers spun past us, eyes wide and mouths set in identical Os.
“I don’t know about this,” my mother whispered nervously. But after a two-hour car drive and a long wait for inner tube rentals, there was no going back.
Gingerly, we stepped one by one into the water, sat down in our tubes and were swept off our feet and down the river. After a minute or two of floating, I looked back for my parents. My dad seemed to be doing OK. My mom was another story.
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She lay atop her inner tube as if carved from a wooden plank, staring up at the sky and piteously calling my name. As other tubes brushed past her, I watched her grab at them until she managed to locate a man’s foot.
“So sorry,” she shouted at the clouds, “but I’ve got to hold on to your ankle until I can find my daughter!”
“Um, OK,” the man said.
Oh dear.
I hopped off my inner tube and fought the current back to her.
“OK then,” I said, grabbing her inner tube and looking down into her face. “I’m here, mom. You can let go of the man’s foot now. Thank you,” I nodded at the man. “You’re free to go.”
“No problem,” he said, grimacing and rubbing his ankle as he continued floating down the river.
“Mom, you have got to relax.”
“I’m trying!” she said mournfully. “Where’s Daddy?”
I scoured the tubers behind us until I saw him. At that precise moment, he bumped into a jagged rock and was knocked out of his tube, hitting the water with a smack. When he stood up, I could see blood pouring from his knee. I winced. That was bad.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
Directly behind him, two teenage ass-hats in inner tubes were headed his way. They had attached their tubes together with a friggin’ rope, which was headed straight for my dad’s shins.
As I shouted a warning, time stopped, the dark clouds above us parted and a heavenly spotlight trapped me in its glare. I looked up, squinting. It was God.
“This is for the time you rigged the high school PA system to play ‘Rock Me Amadeus’ during weekly devotional,” He intoned. “And for all the times you went to frat parties and told your parents you were at Youth Group.” God paused. “Oh, and also that time when you egged Michael Peterson’s windshield and cracked it and never told anyone.” I cringed. I thought no one had seen that.
“I’m sorry, God,” I croaked.
“Too late!” He said irritatedly as the clouds melded back together.
Time resumed. The rope hit my dad’s legs and down he went again, while my heart lurched helplessly in my chest.
Pulling my mother on her inner tube behind me, I slogged back toward my father. He was still on his knees when I got to him.
“Are you OK?” I asked, helping him up.
“Fine, fine,” he said gruffly. “I just need to take care of this.” He pointed down at his bleeding legs. I winced. It was all my fault. Why oh why had I ever let those mice go in the high school girls’ restroom? Idiot!
As my dad and I helped my mom off her tube and onto the shore, I would’ve begun sobbing with remorse if it hadn’t been for the sight of a bus from the inner tube company miraculously parked on a road beside the river. My parents managed to hitch a ride back to the business, where they waited for the rest of us to finish the run.
Would this have happened even if I hadn’t snuck out every single time my parents went out of town? Probably. But I might not have felt so guilty about it.
Anyway, all my stepdaughters need to know is that unless they want to watch their dad and me get hit by a giant anvil falling out of the sky on some distant day when their heads have cleared and their hormones have settled, they’d better not miss curfew any time soon.
Read more Suburban Turmoil at www.suburbanturmoil.blogspot.com/ or on the Scene’s blog at www.pithinthewind.com/.