Every summer, we head to Williams Lake at least once. It's the closest lake to our home, located in the mountains about 10 miles away. Sometimes we go with others and sometimes we go by ourselves. This year we went at the beginning of July on a Wednesday afternoon with some neighbors' kids & grandkids.
The trip started off fun. The sun was shining, the water was cool, and we floated in boats and innertubes.
Then several members of our group decided to go jump off the large rock that's about 100 yards away from the dock. I watched Ammon jump off (for his first time!!!) and then Josh jumped off, too. When everyone in the group was done, they began heading back. After they arrived back at the dock, other people in our large group wanted to jump, too. Josh took Micah and began paddling back to the tall rock as some others took innertubes there, too. This is when the trouble began.
I was floating in a tube near the dock and so was Ammon; he was in one of the neighbor's boats. Jonah was standing on the dock, and Ammon and Jonah were bantering back and forth about riding in the boat. Ammon threw an oar to Jonah, and told him to hold it. Jonah threw it back at him, but he didn't catch it and it landed in the water. I was looking at Josh and Micah as they were nearing the distant rock cliff, and didn't pay attention to what was happening next to me until I heard Ammon say "nice work!" in a sarcastic tone. Then I found out that the oar that Jonah had tossed to Ammon (but wasn't caught) didn't float--it had sunk. I immediately tried to find it. I looked all around the area they said it had gone in, and I kicked my feet deep down trying to feel something hard. Right off the dock where we were, it's about 12-15 feet deep and there's lots of tall moss growing so it's impossible to see the bottom. I hadn't brought any goggles, so I couldn't swim down to see anything either. I had asked the boys to all bring their goggles before we left the house, but they said they wouldn't need them so nobody in my family had them, either. I asked everyone on the dock if they had goggles, but nobody did. I was getting frantic and started yelling at the boys because they hadn't been responsible with the items that they were using that didn't belong to them. The neighbor (who the oar belongs to) kept telling me over and over that we could come back another day with goggles to retrieve his missing oar. I didn't want to come back, I wanted to find it now. I told Ammon to get out of the water, because he was still just laying in the boat next to me doing nothing to help. Then Jonah decided to help, so he took his glasses off and placed them on the dock and jumped in the water to look under the surface. But he was wearing a life jacket, so that did him no good (life jackets help you float, not swim under water!!!). After a couple minutes, he decided to climb back onto the dock. It was at this point that he discovered that his glasses were gone--the ones he'd just set on the dock a few minutes earlier. During this whole time, there was a boat that had been docked and two jet skis, so there were lots of people on the dock besides just the people in our group. The glasses obviously got kicked off unintentionally by someone and they too had fallen in the water. Jonah had only had the glasses for just over a month, so I went LIVID at this point. I was screaming at him and Ammon for causing this mess. Josh said he could hear me yelling where he was at on the large rock (where, by the way, Micah also jumped off for the first time!). I decided it was time to go home right then. I got out of the water, and as soon as I got onto the dock, I slipped and fell onto my back. I swore (but I don't remember which choice word exactly). I walked up the steep steps to the truck, and I drove it down to the dock to load all of our tubes. I figured that if Josh wasn't back to the dock by the time I was all packed and ready, that I would just leave him there and he could get get a ride home with our neighbors. Thankfully, as soon as I got everything all packed, he showed up in his boat with Micah and several other kids. I was shaking and could hardly even talk at this point. He got the gist of what happened, and thought he could save the glasses. He went diving into the area of water where we were earlier, even though I told him it was an impossible task. He didn't believe me, though. Thankfully, after going down just once, he came up to the surface and agreed with me, saying it was far too deep and the glasses were officially gone. He helped load our boat in the truck, and we were ready to leave. Our neighbor once again told me that we could just come back another time with goggles to retrieve the oar and glasses, but I told him that we would purchase him some new oars to replace the one that was lost. We got into the truck and started the drive back home. Josh and I were both super mad about what had transpired, and the kids were super silent in the backseat (there was also some tears being shed back there, too).
As soon as we got home, we changed clothes and I drove Jonah into town to buy some new replacement oars. He and Ammon both spent their own money on the purchase since it was their fault that it was gone. Then we drove to the neighbor's house to drop off the new oars. Jonah went to the door with the oars, but they refused them, saying that it was all okay. I knew that it wasn't okay with them, though, because the neighbor had already told me at least 5 times while we were at the lake that we could still find the oar. I was NOT going to do that, and go through the whole process again. So we left the bag of oars on their gate, and I texted them saying that I was trying to teach my children a lesson and I would appreciate if they would keep the replacement oars. The next day, I contacted the eye doctor, and thankfully, they ordered another pair of glasses for Jonah free of charge (good thing for him, because we would've made him pay for those, too).
We laugh about this day now, but at the time, it was one of the most stressful moments of our summer.
Lessons Learned:
1. Don't wear glasses to the lake
2. Don't throw things into the lake that don't belong to you
3. Don't jump into the lake to save something under water while wearing a life jacket!!!
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