Made From Rubber

Courtesy Pixabay

I'm sure a lot of us men admire a certain amount of physical flexibility in a woman, but sometime we see something that just scares us.

I don't remember how I got in on this because I didn't know the guy who rented the boat very well. A group of us young adults at a church convention went water skiing in the Sacramento River in Sacramento, California. No the water wasn't very clean back then either. The other two guys convinced one of the young ladies to come and one of the girls I was hanging out with came as well.

We had a blast. With me on the end of the rope the guys ran the boat all over the place trying to get me to wipe out. They came close. One sequence over some wakes from another boat had me doing weird things with the rope to try to keep it from going slack or jerk me off balance. All the while those two guys were in the boat just laughing their heads off. When my turn came to an end they told me how impressed with my skill they were.

Once all of us guys had our turns, we tried to convince the ladies to give it a try. The girl they brought with wouldn't have anything to do with it, but Debbie was ready to go. Never water skied in her life and we were having a tough time getting her started. I ended up in the water floating with my life vest on trying to get her into the proper starting position. When ready the guys would hit the throttle and she'd wipe out before ever getting out of the water. I'd swim a few hundred feet to catch up and we'd try it all over again. She was determined so this went on for quite awhile before she finally gave up. I admired her effort but one of the failures had all of us guys wincing.

Her ski points were sticking out of the water in front of her perfectly positioned and the guys opened the throttle. One ski went right and the other went left. She went full splits and beyond. Jean Claude Van Damme eat your heart out. I swear those ski points were still sticking straight up when they were almost all the way behind her. I'm sure her feet twisted in the bindings so it probably wasn't as bad as it looked. It looked like her legs screwed all the way around in their sockets. The guys in the boat all wore an expression that I'm sure reflected my own: If-that-was-me-I'd-never-walk-again.

We never said anything to her and if she reads this, it'll be the first she knows of it. Yes, she's still a friend of mine on Facebook so she just might. I stank like the Sacramento River for days (that stuff doesn't just wash off) but it was a lot of fun and a great memory.