Not my story

As I mentioned previously I had other stories from the reunion I wanted to share.  Family reunions are fun for me because I like to see how well the family's talents and abilities mesh together.  

I seem to be able to adequately express myself with a pen, but verbally... as I have mentioned, comes out so boring it puts myself to sleep.  My brother Doug and Dave seem to have the ability to talk.  They can both talk their way or out of just about any situation.  I am on the opposite end of the spectrum.  I couldn't sell a glass of water to a dying victim in the middle of the Sahara. 

At the reunion Doug was telling a story and I just sat there marveling at his craft of story telling.  This is an easy blog for me.  I wanted to retell the story as close to how he told it as I can recall.  He carved this one out and put the details in... I am just going to attempt to wrap a bow on it and regift it to you... the reader.  Enjoy!

This story would probably be told different by Gwenette because she sees the whole thing from a different perspective.  We were on a float trip and drifting through a calm spot on the river.  There wasn't much going on in the river.  

I was in the back of the boat putting a fly on my line.  Gwenette was in the middle and Tucker (dog) was lounged out on the front of the boat.  He is retarded and doesn't like the water.  Whatever was going through his head, he decided to get in the water. Instead of jumping in, he lazily stretched out and slowly melted over the edge of the boat head first.  As he went in his back legs got tangled in the rope and he was stuck.  Gwenette was sitting closer but she was not doing anything yet.  I finally decided to get up, reach over her and get him unstuck. I lunged for the front of the boat.  But, by this time Gwenette decided to help Tucker out too.  When she was untangling him I turned to to the back of the boat, just in time to see my pole go in the river.  I could see it doing a slow sink to the bottom.   I lunged out and grabbed for it but it was about an inch out of my reach.  It was slowly sinking and we are floating further down river.  The pole alone is $500.  I did not want to just lose it.  Without hesitation I went in after it.

Pole now in hand I turned around and start running towards the boat.  Gwenette did not know what the Hell was going on.  All she knew is that she was helping Tucker get untangled and then I am in the river too.  The water was up to my chest and the boat was still floating and getting further and further away.  

And then I saw my tackle box topple off the edge of the boat.  The tackle box has about $900 worth of flies in it. I was not prepared to let that go too.  Now IT was doing the slow sink to the bottom too and I was running as fast as I could to catch it.  Running in water that deep is very difficult and I was not getting to it very fast even though I was running as fast as I could.  

Finally I caught up to my tackle box.  Now I had my pole in one hand, and my tackle box tucked under the other arm. I had to keep running underwater as fast as I could to catch the boat.  Gwenette was looking at me like I was stupid.  She could not figure out what I was doing...  And then my hat fell in the river.  It was slowly sinking too.  Through even more strenuous running, I managed to get my hat back and caught up to the boat at the same time  After all of the underwater aerobics, I was too tired to get back up into the boat.  

I drug it over to the shore and toppled back in.