Sad Day for the Coast Guard

You spend 18+ years outdoing yourself trying to keep them safe. When they're still young and impressionable you check out the video "Pier Safety" from the library, after you take them to a special lecture given by the Coast Guard guys, where everyone learns that it is not a good choice to be on the pier when the waves are high. In fact, surprisingly, the Coast Guard fellas said the pier wasn't even intended for people to walk out on, but it isn't possible for them to keep people off. They can't put up fencing and such, because then when someone climbs over it and falls off the pier and gets hurt, then the Coast Guard is liable. But one thing is for sure: you should never, never jump off the pier.

You know as time passes, this just makes them want to jump off the pier all the more. They grow up and their friends start jumping off the pier. But you say, "promise me you won't jump off the pier." Because you don't ever want to hear, "but I didn't know there was a rock there" or "but I slipped and fell short of the water" or "she might have been caught by the tail end of a rip current, we will never know..."

She's going to the beach again. So you call out to her, as she walks toward the car with her friend, "no jumping off the pier!"

On Sunday, while having brunch with Grandma and Grandpa at a restaurant in the same town where that pier is stretching out into the Great Lake of Michigan, Grandpa makes a joke about pier jumping. I misunderstand that it is a joke and think he is actually talking about Fash. I turn to her and say, "did you jump off the pier?"

She stares straight ahead at the menu.

My apologies to the Coast Guard. I did the very best I could.

(Grandpa kept apologizing to Fash over brunch, "I didn't mean to get you in trouble." Later they talked by phone and he offered her a place to stay if she needed it. )

Moral of the story: Mother always finds out, one way- or another.

(Where does I.T. fit into this story, you ask? He offered to switch places with Fash, who was sitting next to me in the booth in the restaurant. She took him up on it. After brunch they went for a walk on the pier.)

*picture found on facebook