Me and Grave Errors in Judgment #3 Down by the River (A True Story)
Hi, my name is Kerry Nelson, and I have serious problems with judgment. Case in point:
Last night I ended up sitting on my dock a little after midnight, bored and feeling vaguely stressed and upset. (You're so vain, you probably think my issues are about you, but they're not.) I decided that a quick round of night swimming would help me relax, so I went for it. However, I didn't feel like getting my boxers wet, and since it was dark and late anyway, I just leapt naked into the river (A more common occurence than you'd think. I wouldn't raise my eye about it.)
While Sylvan was here, he told me that he had managed to swim to the bridge and back. I figured that that would be a pretty cool thing to do, so I started swimming that way. All of the comb jellies were out, so basically every stroke I took lit the water up and I had this neon green trail going off behind me. There were birds and bats blowing around in the wind, a little bit of moonlight reflected in the clouds, and all in all it was pretty cool, right up until I got pretty close to the bridge and realized two things simultaneously:
1) Sylvan is in much better shape than me, and
2) I was too tired to swim all the way back to my dock.
Remember, at this point I am completely stark naked. My options were limited. I could try swimming back and risk exhaustion, or I could try to sprint the half mile from the bridge to my house. I briefly considered making a skirt of sorts out of palm fronds, but figured that that would be even harder to explain to the cops. (I figured no one but the police would stop me, because honestly, would you stop your car and roll down your window early in the morning to ask a sopping wet naked guy what he was doing running down the road?)
I treaded water for a while, seeing how busy the road was. It looked like about one car every two or three minutes, tops, so I decided to make my move. I don't think I've ever run faster in my life, despite the wind resistance and bare feet. There were a couple of times when I thought a car was coming and made a running dive into the bushes, but I ended up OK. (Note to world: NEVER dive naked into bushes. Not worth it.)
At the last minute, I remembered my drunken, trailer trash, truckdriving neighbors across the street, who sit on their porch until sunrise most nights. I swerved into my next door neighbors yard, realized that one of them works the graveyard shift at Hunter and leaves around one, and thus people were out and about, with lights on and windows open. I made another dive into the bushes(Repeat: NEVER do this), and crawled the rest of the way to my yard, drawing on my years of stealth knowledge. I finally made it in around 12:51.
See people? This is what I have to do for entertainment when everyone is busy/out of town. You should feel ashamed.
Bonus points to anyone who can find all of the song/band references in this post. There are three in the title alone.
Last night I ended up sitting on my dock a little after midnight, bored and feeling vaguely stressed and upset. (You're so vain, you probably think my issues are about you, but they're not.) I decided that a quick round of night swimming would help me relax, so I went for it. However, I didn't feel like getting my boxers wet, and since it was dark and late anyway, I just leapt naked into the river (A more common occurence than you'd think. I wouldn't raise my eye about it.)
While Sylvan was here, he told me that he had managed to swim to the bridge and back. I figured that that would be a pretty cool thing to do, so I started swimming that way. All of the comb jellies were out, so basically every stroke I took lit the water up and I had this neon green trail going off behind me. There were birds and bats blowing around in the wind, a little bit of moonlight reflected in the clouds, and all in all it was pretty cool, right up until I got pretty close to the bridge and realized two things simultaneously:
1) Sylvan is in much better shape than me, and
2) I was too tired to swim all the way back to my dock.
Remember, at this point I am completely stark naked. My options were limited. I could try swimming back and risk exhaustion, or I could try to sprint the half mile from the bridge to my house. I briefly considered making a skirt of sorts out of palm fronds, but figured that that would be even harder to explain to the cops. (I figured no one but the police would stop me, because honestly, would you stop your car and roll down your window early in the morning to ask a sopping wet naked guy what he was doing running down the road?)
I treaded water for a while, seeing how busy the road was. It looked like about one car every two or three minutes, tops, so I decided to make my move. I don't think I've ever run faster in my life, despite the wind resistance and bare feet. There were a couple of times when I thought a car was coming and made a running dive into the bushes, but I ended up OK. (Note to world: NEVER dive naked into bushes. Not worth it.)
At the last minute, I remembered my drunken, trailer trash, truckdriving neighbors across the street, who sit on their porch until sunrise most nights. I swerved into my next door neighbors yard, realized that one of them works the graveyard shift at Hunter and leaves around one, and thus people were out and about, with lights on and windows open. I made another dive into the bushes(Repeat: NEVER do this), and crawled the rest of the way to my yard, drawing on my years of stealth knowledge. I finally made it in around 12:51.
See people? This is what I have to do for entertainment when everyone is busy/out of town. You should feel ashamed.
Bonus points to anyone who can find all of the song/band references in this post. There are three in the title alone.