God Loves Stupid Teenagers

It's time for "Story Time with Adoro"! Today's story is especially inane, so grab a cuppa-somethin', sit back and join me on a trip through memory lane.

Back in high school, although my best friend was sometimes a little wild, we really weren't bad kids and really didn't get into a lot of trouble. (Seriously, as an aside, she wasn't even with me the night I almost got arrested by the cop most kids called "Dick the pr*ck". And on that night, we were all the bookish-type kids who NEVER got in trouble. Um....Mom STILL doesn't know about that night. Or the story I'm about to tell. Both are filed under "stuff Mom doesn't need to know. Ever.")

So, anyway, now that we've established the fact that we were pretty normal kids, one beautiful Saturday afternoon, tired of staring at our own streets, we decided to head out to one of the nearby lakes. I was probably 16 at the time, she would have been 16 or 17, and had her license and her own car. Without telling anyone where we were going (other than "the lake) we headed the few miles out of town to Lake Mazaska. Because the beach was sure to be crowded and annoying, we decided it would be fun to hang out at the dock and watch the activity there. We really didn't care about swimming; we just wanted a place to hang out, talk, and maybe get our feet a little wet in the cool water.

Before long, we were helping boats in or giving them a friendly shove-off, joking with people here and there and just having a great time in general. One particular family came in to gas up and refill their cooler, and while chatting with them as they waited for their dad, they asked us if we liked water-skiing.  Both of us had recently learned how to ski and of course, loved it. Upon learning this, they invited us into the boat for an afternoon of skiing.

My friend looked at me, eyes shining at the prospect.  "Should we?"

Me, just as excited, said back, "SURE!"

As I recall...I'm not even sure I was wearing a swimsuit that day, not planning to swim. But what I had on was fine for the water and of course, this family insisted we wear our life jackets at all times. No problem; we'd been raised that way, too.

It was a wonderful afternoon of skiing, crashing, and near-drowning. I think I actually lowered the level of the lake a few inches because of all the water I took in that day. The oldest daughter on the boat, in helping me in after a particularly-bad crash, asked me, "Thirsty?"

"Not anymore!"

I agreed to sip on a pop (as we call carbonated beverages here in MN) anyway, if only to get the taste of the lake out of my mouth.

Late that afternoon, we returned to the shore, helped them pull their boat in and thanked them for inviting us to water-ski with them.  They told us that they'd be back the following Saturday (weather permitting) and we were welcome to join them again, about the same time we were there that day.  Again we thanked them and said we'd try to be there next Saturday, too.

As we returned home, my best friend commented how nice those people were, and she thought it was cool they weren't drinking or anything. They didn't have anything harder in their cooler than a Pepsi!  That very fact had made us both much more comfortable with the arrangement.

After awhile she asked me, "So...how do you know those people?"

"What?"

She glanced at me with a weird look on her face and turned her attention back to the road.  "How did you know those people? Did you  know they were going to be there today?"

"Um....I didn't know those people! I thought you did! I've never met them before today!"

This time we exchanged glances that were a mixture of shock, horror, and happy surprise. (Try doing THAT one in a mirror!).

"So..." she said, musing, "We just got into a boat with perfect strangers...."

"Yeah."  I mused silently on our stupidity.  "That was dumb."

"I thought you knew them!"

"Well, I thought YOU knew them!"

Hilarity erupted.

And, of course, we were back at the dock that following Saturday to join our new friends in one of the best summer sports on earth.

I think God loves children and stupid teenagers.

The End.

Disclaimer:   Kids, do NOT do what we did, although we only did what we did because we mistakenly thought the other person knew the strangers in question. We got very very lucky. No one knew where we were and if these had been bad people we would have probably ended up dead and washed up in a river somewhere.