"Slip" Splish Splash

A view of the St. John's River

When I was five or maybe six years old, I went on a fishing trip to the St. John's River in Florida with my dad and uncle. Prior to the trip, I remember asking my dad if we would be swimming in the St. John's like we went swimming in the Flint River whenever we went there on weekends during the summer. My dad said that we would not be doing this. The St. John's, unlike the Flint was too dirty to go swimming in, he told me. We would only be fishing.

In spite of this explanation, I couldn't get the idea of swimming in the St. John's out of my mind. If you could swim in one river, why couldn't you swim in the other? It didn't make sense to me. I remember a lot of details of the trip in spite of it being so long ago. Besides my uncle--Super Bob, and my dad, Uncle Ben also accompanied us. He was actually my great uncle. I remember how thin and dry he looked, but he seemed like a nice enough guy. He loved to talk and he entertained us constantly with tales of fishing trips past. We fished all day on the St. John's from our john boat, and it seems like all we caught was a single fish. I remember seeing a giant eagle's nest with an eagle perched inside of it and being filled with a sense of awe at the sight. Uncle Ben said the bird was actually an osprey, but that was close enough to an eagle for me. I couldn't wait to tell my mom about it when we got home.

I also couldn't see the supposed difference between the St. John's and the Flint. As far as I could tell, they were both large bodies of fresh water where people fished. It was the dead of summer time, and the heat was oppressive. All I could think about all day besides the magical eagle, and the fact that no fish were biting was how cool and refreshing it would be to jump in the water. Late that afternoon, after we were done fishing and relaxing at Uncle Ben's cabin, I had an idea. I told my dad that I wanted to try my hand at fishing on the pier for awhile because I was so disappointed at not catching a fish all day on the boat. I was wearing jeans and a baseball cap as I had not been allowed to bring my swim trunks. My mother hadn't let me pack them because, knowing how much I wanted to swim in the St. John's, she felt it would be too tempting.

But that was really okay with me because I'd always wondered what it would be like to swim in jeans anyway. I thought of it as having two fun new experiences at once: swimming in a new river and in jeans instead of swim trunks. I was excited walking towards the pier with a fishing rod and a small container of crickets. It was like setting out on an adventure. I fished for awhile contemplating my plan as I did so. No fish were biting off the pier either and boredom set in. It wasn't a long drop from the pier to the water and it looked so cool and inviting. My plan was to accidentally fall in. That way I wasn't breaking any rules. It would just be an accident. I was just a little boy, and everyone knew little boys often had accidents. I thought if I fell in with the pole in my hand, it would be more believable. So I took a deep breath and casually stepped off the end of the pier into the water.

I remember that it seemed a further drop from the pier than it had appeared, but the water was as nice and cool as I had imagined. I still couldn't understand my parents' swimming prohibition. Swimming in jeans, however, turned out to be a mistake. They were so heavy that kicking my feet to stay afloat was difficult. I also saw, to my chagrin, that the pole I had jumped in with had escaped my grip. It was beyond my reach and floating steadily away on the river's current. All I could do was watch it go. That wasn't good. Losing the fishing pole, I knew, meant there was a spanking in my future.

Apparently my dad had seen me "slip" because he came outside the cabin and yelled at me.

"What the hell are you doing, Charlie?" he asked.

"I fell in," I replied. "I accidentally dropped the pole."

"Get your ass out of that water!" he told me.

Unhappily, I swam the short distance to the shore, struggling to do so in my water-logged jeans. My dad quickly untied the boat and motored right past me on his way to retrieve the dropped fishing pole. I went inside dripping water on the floor and faced Super Bob and Uncle Ben.

"I fell in," I explained. Both of them laughed like I'd told a particularly funny joke. I went to the bathroom to shed the jeans.

A few minutes later, my dad returned. He hadn't seen the humor in my stunt, and didn't believe for a moment that I had slipped. He gave me three licks with his belt for almost losing his fishing pole, and I was hurt that my own father thought I was lying. I appealed to Super Bob.

"I was walking toward the end of the pier," I told him, "and a shadow went across my head. I thought it was that eagle about swoop down on me, and I slipped and fell in."

He laughed. "Yeah, right," he said. "You expect me to believe that when all you've been talking about is how it's not fair you can't swim in the St. John's like you do the Flint?"

"Yes," I said. "Because I'm telling the truth."

But he didn't believe me and I was heartbroken. The only person whose sympathy I successfully appealed to was my mother after we got home. "Your dad should have been more concerned with you than his fishing pole," she said. "He can always get another rod and reel, but he'll never get another Charlie."

"That's right," I said, vindicated. "That pier was slippery and I thought an eagle was going to get me."

Daddy just smirked, but I could tell from his half smile that he was finally seeing the humor in the situation.

"So was it really an eagle flying over you?" he asked.

"No. Just a cloud passing over the sun," I said.

He shook his head and walked away smiling.