Just Hanging Out

All of yesterday afternoon, I spent supine on a speed-boat with the ambiguous name High Raiser. Ambiguous only, of course, if you don’t know Fast Freddy – the 5’2” amicable owner.

Freddy had taken his friends on a cruise – frying up a whopping $176 in gas by the time he reached our beach. They were hanging out on their boat when Vanessa, mother of two, and my date for the afternoon, spotted them and began stalking them from the beach, waving her arms at them and hollering. After all, the guy on the boat was nobody less then her old flame from her wild days in this town of six hundred.

At first, it seemed they were taking off on her and in my mind I was running through a top ten list of impact-atenuating comments to help my new friend cope. But then they turned and shut off the engines again, and six-foot Vanessa began her laborious wade through the cool waters of this northern lake.

After a couple of hours, her kids followed. Then so did mine and eventually I did as well. Jules, riding on top of my shoulders, had been cheering me on all along ‘boat, boat, boat, boat, boat.’ So what was I supposed to do?

To say the least, it wasn’t a likely crowd for me. And with my plain dark blue Speedo suit and knotted beach hair I wasn’t a likely match for them either. But we all spent a surprisingly fun time on board of the High Raiser.

After initally pondering the effect of a couple of salacious comments to the owner, I decided to relax and dig into the bag of Lay’s circling around instead. The kids were taking turns diving off the side of the boat and 23-months old Jules was flirting with one of the female crew members. Time to chill.

The reason for my sojourn on the High Raiser, Fast Freddy, turned out to be quite a charmer. He also was turning a darker shade of crimson by the minute. His short, stout appearance seemed an unlikely match for Vanessa. But in her own words, he was and always will be: Fast Freddy-everything with him had to be fast…cars, boats, you name it.

I smiled and helped myself to another handful of chips.