Chapter 21

This summer seemed to be starting off with some promise. At Lagoon I’d been permanently assigned to Boat Tag as a primary operator and placed in charge for any shift I worked. Unfortunately it wasn’t an official supervisory position, but it did let me exercise some leadership and to have the advantage of knowing where I would be working every day. An added benefit since it wasn’t a regular game was the fact that I didn’t have to worry about the prize inventories like you would at other games. The thing I did have to do though was to make sure that the balls were scooped out of the water and loaded for the buckets we would sell outside of the fence line. It did have its disadvantages, though. Boat Tag was at the far south end of the park, so there wasn’t a whole lot at that end except the Colossus roller coaster. The next game over was a squirt gun race game that had its own theme song it would play anytime the game started – and only that one song. Hearing that song the first few days of summer I could definitely tell you that “Green Acres” was NOT the place to be. (Author note: picture hearing four lines of the same song ... over and over again all day).

I started to settle into a rhythm that summer. Shifts at work would typically start no sooner than about noon and run through as late as 1 am on a Friday or Saturday. Some nights we would go to Denny’s after work and hang out as a group of us. I was typically up in the morning by about 8. Once a week I’d have to mow the lawn or other chore clean up around the house and I would usually try to go for a 3-5 mile run, typically about three times a week. I wasn’t trying to stay in seasonal shape for cross country, but I wanted to make sure that I wouldn’t have as much work to do when the season did start as those who were lazy during the summer. Granted, it didn’t hurt that it also kept me from getting a soft body and let me be able to still maintain my six pack abs.

Dating during the summer so far was pretty uneventful. Tonya and Tenille were still two I’d spend time with outside work, but they were both just friends. Pretty friends, granted, but just friends nonetheless. One thing we did was to take advantage of a day off we each had together. We went to a smaller amusement park called Cherry Hill that had a couple water slides, a lazy river, and a mini-golf course together. While at the mini-golf the two girls had to boast that between the two of them they could pin me or dunk me in the pond and I couldn’t stop them. I had to laugh a little at that, Tonya wouldn’t have known that I had wrestled for three years previously and Tenille must have thought that the two of them would offset it. Thankfully for me two girls weighing 100 pounds dripping wet couldn’t get the best of me, but it was sure fun to let them try!

That summer wasn’t all good though, as one day in particular would end up rocking my family to the core. On a day in July I was scheduled to work, my dad and step-mom decided to take my two sisters out boating to Willard Bay. In itself it wasn’t unusual, my dad had bought an older boat that was in decent shape the year before and we would take it out to go water skiing or fishing fairly regularly. That day I ended up getting relieved early at work so I was home by about 6. I had been home long enough to have showered and start watching some TV when the doorbell rang.

Opening the door revealed my step-mom’s brother at the door. One look at him though and I knew something was wrong. The first indicator was the fact I hadn’t known he was coming and he lived about 100 miles away, so it wasn’t a convenient surprise visit for him. Calvin sat me down on the couch and told me that when my family went boating the wind had picked up and my sisters had gotten knocked off the banana boat they were riding. They were in the water separated and panicking. Doing what any dad would, my dad went into the water after them. Unfortunately he didn’t take the time to take a life vest with him, he just knew he had to get into the water to help them. He did end up getting to them both and getting them back together. That’s the point when two things went drastically wrong. The first: my step-mom was inexperienced with the boat and stalled the engine out and couldn’t get over to where the three of them were at first. The second: my dad’s diabetes had a tragic flair up combined with him swallowing a lot of water and he ended up passing out before going under and eventually drowning. Unfortunately my two sisters at 15 and 13 years old were unable to support his weight when he passed out.