Once while I was staying over at my cousin Blake's house for a week
in the summer he had a Boy Scout camp out that he was supposed to go
on. I had camped out a lot and we did that kind of thing for fun
because we had few other options but these guy had good toys and
video games and still wanted to camp-out for some reason. I was
Blake's shadow for the week so it was arranged that I should go along
with them camping up the canyon and going fishing in the river. I was
nervous because in my home Boy Scout troop the older boys were pretty
vicious. As it happened these guys were actually very cool and
thought I was funny, which only serves to demonstrate their
intelligence and good taste. We stayed up late telling jokes and
funny stories until the leaders told us to go to bed. The next
morning we all went fishing, but these city-fied kids didn't know how
so I showed many of them how to get their poles set up and how to
present the bait. I didn't have a pole of my own so I was borrowing
one of the leader's poles and I got his lure that I borrowed badly
stuck. The water was shallow so I thought I could reach down and
retrieve the lure. I could reach it but it was badly hooked through a
snarl of some kind of rope. I went and asked the leader if I could
borrow a knife to cut a rope loose, I failed to mention that this
rope was under two feet of water. I went back and laid down on a log
that was laying by the river and opened the knife and followed the
line down with my hand to my armpit. When I tried to cut the lure
loose the currant caught the knife and it came out of my hand and my
heart froze as I panicked. I felt around for the knife in the
freezing water for what seemed like an hour. My shirt was soaked and
I was about to cry when the leaders found me. They were just relived to find me because they were worried I had
fallen in and was lost. I had spent so long trying to recover
the knife that no one knew where I was and they were starting to get very nervous. The leader was able to pull
his lure free but he was not able to find the knife. I guess he
saw I was already torn up enough about loosing his knife that he
didn't scold me at all. He told me it was okay and that he needed
a new one anyway. I am glad there are men in this world that will
take a boy that they don't know fishing and when he losses their
knife they don't make a fuss. The only problem is that there are not
nearly enough.
