Spring is ALMOST HERE!!! HALLELUJIAH!!!!!!!!!! I strictly believe that spring doesn't actually start until the Dogwood trees have blossomed... and they should be budding about now. :)
So it has been a little while since I have blogged, and although I've started a couple and just not finished them I figured that today I'd write about a funny story (inspired by what I love to do in the spring: go canoeing).
Growing up my parent's Sunday School class went canoeing down the Buffalo River every spring, just after the water has risen. There was about 8 couples and everyone brought their kids.
We always stayed in a small town called Gilbert with a population of 48 (no lie), and there was at least a dozen dogs that ran free in the town. When you checked in your cabin it was like a dog assigned himself/herself to your family. When you'd walk up, they would just sit on the ground at the bottom of the porch, and when you were leaving to go to another cabin or the general store they would loyally follow you down the dirt road. I guess we fed the dogs a little bit, but nothing substantial. Nonetheless, they always seemed fed.
There were only 4 places you could go while you were in town: the river (which, of course, I was never allowed to go to by myself), one of the other cabins (usually the group would pretty much rent out all of them, so it was like we ran the town for the weekend), the cafe (the only place to eat in town), or the General Store.
My brother, Sean, and I would save our allowance for a couple of weeks (which probably amounted to a whopping $15 bucks)
and blow every cent on candy. I mean it is a wonder that our teeth didn't rot out after the end of the trip. Our parent's didn't really mind much though because we'd just go play with the other kids from the group and all be hyper together. (I disticntly remember one time getting in trouble for climbing on the roof of one of the cabins with my friend Emily. Our parents were all sitting around a bonfire less than 20 feet away hanging out and drinking beer when someone told them that their rowdy kids were on the roof of the cabin. All they did was yell, "HEY! Get down off the roof!!" That was it, didn't get up to scold us or anything. It was awesome).
Gilbert is probably one of my favorite places on earth because of all the things I remember doing: climbing trees, playing with the random dogs, swinging on the tire swing, playing baseball, and, most of all, canoeing.
So, here's my funny story about canoeing:
I was about 7 years old and up until this point in my life my family had always rented one big raft which would usually result in my dad being the only one who would paddle. So by 1993 he had decided that it was time for us to upgrade to canoes. He and I were in one, my mother and my brother were in the other. I had no idea what I was doing, my mom figured she should know what she was doing, and my brother just got frustrated being in the same canoe with my mom and going in circles.
For some reason I swear we tied the canoes together (why? Probably because my mom and my bro flipped about 3 times in 20 minutes), which was brilliant... until we came upon rapids (and by rapids I mean nothing life threatening, but this particular set of rapids was pretty small). What you are already thinking would happen did. We flipped... all of us...
So now imagine little 7 year old Shannon with her orange life-vest bobbing downstream, my father swimming after me and takes me to the bank of the river. He then grabs the canoes (still connected, in case you were wondering) and says, "Shannon, I need you to hold on to these, can you do that?" Shivering, I replied, "Yes."
Now, what you don't know at this point is that all the while I was bobbing downriver and panicking that I was going to be bit by some snake or worse eaten by a bear while holding these cursed canoes, my brother was holding onto a flimsy tree in the middle of the rapid that caused us all to topple over. Yes, Sean was holding on to this little tree and screaming for dear life. Seriously. Sean had a pretty high pitched voice when he was a kid (thankfully he grew out of). I have a very clear mental image of my brother desperately holding on to this little tree and my mother standing in the water 2 feet from him (and his high voice), looking over at me and my dad and shrugging her shoulders as if to say: "It looks like both of his legs are in-tacked, I'm not sure why he keeps screaming."
Anyway, now that you know what was going on in the background of my father and my conversation, the next thing he said to me was, "Shannon, I'm going to go over there and take care of your brother. Are you going to be okay?"
Brilliantly, I responded with "Yes, I'll just wait for the helicopters." I will have you know that this response was completely logical to me. See, back in the day I watched Rescue 911 with William Shatner. If you ever watched the show you knew that anytime there was danger, a helicopter was nearby with firefighters and a camera crew.
So that was it, that was my first experience with canoeing. Can you believe I want to go canoeing again?
