I think it's funny the things you learn and start to notice about yourself as you get older. For example: the only true judge of how tired I really am is if I am too tired to sing along with Pandora, I stand like a deer and have a fake laugh when I am nervous and how I think that anything is fun if you do it with the right people.
     Another thing that has come to light about my personality is that I am terrible in unavoidable crises where no one is hurt. If you have a bone coming out of your leg, your kid is downing, you're having a horrid asthma attack--blood, guts, life emergencies--I'm your girl. 100%. If we're driving and lost in a snow storm, however, I'll be laughing my butt off about how it's a damn good thing I packed the Girl Scout cookies and survival water and talking about how when we run out of gas we'll probably be eaten by inbreeds that live in the corn/wilderness (my biggest fear).
     One such moment occurred when my mom sunk our boat and while she went down with the ship as the captain, I got marooned on the island of Johnson Lake:

     I've been telling Sam, my first serious boyfriend in high school, (OK, not the first serious I thought was serious, but the first who wasn't a douchebag) about our cabin for the whole eight months we've been dating. There's nothing  I like to brag about more than my family. It seems odd to brag about our cabin. It was once a little red school house and looks like the rejected step child of the lake where everyone is now tearing down their crappy little cabins and building "cabins" that are bigger than my house. It's odd to brag about our boat. Our boat goes with our cabin. It's from the 70's and is broken more often than it works. And my family. We can be a load of hot messes from big personalities to all kinds of innuendos. We're awesome. However, probably quite intimidating to new people.
     Well, anyway, Sam has survived. Survived two days of rain in the dinky little cabin with just my family. My mom, my brother, a few aunts, a few cousins, my grandma, grandpa and a whole lot of Snort my family's favorite card game. Today, finally, the rain has stopped. It's not warm. It's not sunny. But it's not raining. Almost everyone went home this morning. When we saw that the rain had stopped, Sam called his mom and said he wouldn't be home until tonight because we were going to take advantage of the day and stay longer.
     My mom, Sam and I head out to the boat. There's a wooden sign my grandpa has hanging in the cabin that says a boat is a hole in the lake into which one pours money. Nothing is more true about this boat. It's so ancient something is always being fixed on it. Larry the Boat Guy probably rolls his eyes and groans every time he sees us roll up. I would at least, if I were him. There have been times when we have had to swim the boat back home like little swimming sled dogs.
     I'm so excited for Sam to see the whole lake. I point out Sally and Duke's cabin and the cabin of the people who started The Buckle. We are nearing the island and I explain how we can't go around the island because Johnson Lake is used for irrigation and so the water gets low on one side of the island toward the end of the summer when they start using the water on area farms.
     Clunk. We hit some sand. A huge cloud of dirt billows up under the water behind the motor. Clunk. The boat jerks. The water is shallow. My mom tries to give it more gas to pull out of the shallow spot. We don't move.  That's when we start taking on water. It seeps across the floor.
     I start to giggle. "I'll push," I say. I take off my sweatshirt (did I mention it was freakishly cold for July?) and jump into the water in my shorts and t-shirt. Sam continues to sit his dainty butt in the front of the boat and my mom is whispering "shit, shit, shit" under her breath. Note to self, I think, remember to tell Tanner that mom said shit, hehehe. I'm trying not to laugh so my laughter comes out like a snort as I'm trying so hard to hold it in. If my allergies weren't so bad at the cabin something probably would have come out of my nose. God, Sam is so lucky to be here with me right now. I start laughing for real.
     The water in the lake is only up to my mid thigh. No wonder we're stuck. I feel under the motor and can see that it's just making a huge hole in the muddy lake bottom. I try to push, but it's not helping. "Hey, princess, want to help or are you afraid of the water?" I ask Sam. He takes off his shirt and gingerly climbs down the ladder to get into the water. Like that was needed considering the water is, like, 2 feet deep, I think, but whatever. He pushes. I push.
     My mom is calling my grandpa who probably has his hearing aids out and can't hear his phone. She calls my aunt Sara, no answer. My grandma, my cousin Clair. What are they doing there, I wonder. Having some sort of plum gig that's for sure if no one can answer our SOS call. Plum gig. We haven't said that in a long time. I'm laughing again. Sam looks at me like I just told him sea creatures are going to swim into his shorts and I laugh harder. I'm not crazy. This is just ridiculous. Our boat is sinking. It is 2006, we are out on a freaking lake with a motor boat in less than three feet of water and our boat is sinking.
     I climb back into the boat and there's a good eight inches of water in the back and it's creeping up toward the front of the boat. "What should we do?" I ask my mom, trying to choke down my giggles. I bit on my lower lip to keep the smile off my face and my chest kind of heaves like I'm convulsing, but really it's just suppressed giggles. What an ab workout to hold back laughter!
    "Well, I don't know. Shit," my mom says. She never swears. I can't help it. I laugh like shit is the funniest word in the world.
     "You're the captain. You have to go down with the ship," I say. "We can try to walk home." Laugh, laugh, laugh. "It's like half a mile to shore and then 4 to get home on the road." I try breathing out my nose so I stop laughing. The heaves get more pronounced with this and I look like someone with a body twitch. "I don't have shoes," I say and the giggles escape. "At least the whole boat won't sink. You'll be able to stand here the whole time," I tell my mom. "Here I'll take off my shirt and use it as an SOS flag. We are in distress!" I take off my t-shirt and throw it at my mom. When it had been so cool earlier, I had dressed in layers so I was now down to my tank top and shorts.
     The sun is finally starting to come out so I decide to lay down on the benches in the front of the sinking boat and start getting my tan on. "We better move toward the prow so we can stay out of the water as long as possible," I say. "Is this the prow? We aren't even real boat people. We don't know the parts of our ship and it's sinking."
     "What are you doing?" Sam says. "You can't just lay down."
     "What else is there to do? I might as well get one afternoon of sun after it's been rainy the whole weekend," I say.
      "If you stay in there it'll just sink faster. Come back into the water," he says.
      "It can't sink all the way. It's, like, three feet of water!"
      "Oh, God, Sara, thank God," my mom says into her cell phone. "We're sinking. In the boat. It's taking on water. We're stuck and there's, like, a foot of water in the back of the boat."
     I roll over on the bench so that my back is to her, cover my face with my sweatshirt and use all of my self control to not roll around with my laughter.
     They're going to come on Duke and Sally's boat. My grandpa and grandma and Tanner. Their going to come tow our boat to The Boat Guy. We sit. We wait. I tan. Mom swears. Sam stands in the water. I twitch every once in a while with suppressed giggles.
     When they finally come to rescue us, Duke and Sally's brand new boat looks like a hero blazing the waters. They can't get too close to us for fear that they could get stuck too. My grandpa tells Sam and me to walk to shore and Sara will come find us in her car.
     You know those stories when old people say I walked 10 miles to school up hill both ways. Well, we walked a half a mile in waist deep water to the island. I figured since we were there Sam might as well see what it's like to be marooned on an island as well. Plus I hadn't been on it since I was a kid. "We used to tell Tanner and Sydney there were pirates on the island," I tell him.
     "Pirates? Really?" he rolls his eyes at me. Apparently he is unamused with the way this day is going.
     I climb up over the tin and rock barrier that surrounds the island. It's man-made, like the lake. The barrier is there so that the waves from the boats don't cause the entire island to slide into the lake. "Yeah, pirates. I don't know why we didn't tell them this is where the gypsies live. That would make more sense for my family." I sit down on a fallen tree branch. "So this is it. Cool huh?"
     "Yeah, I guess so. Not what I thought I'd be doing today." He sits beside me. "So gypsies?"
     "Yeah, they're the reason we can't sleep outside. The gypsies will kidnap us."
     "Gypsies. Here."
     "Yeah, you know, they can't open doors so they can't get us if we sleep inside."
     "They can't open doors? Because they have no hands?"
     "No, because they're gypsies. That's why they don't live in houses."
     "Are you being serious right now?"
     "You just ask my aunt Karla. She'll teach you all you need to know about gypsies." I figure since he just met Karla and spent the weekend with her and all the rest of my family he would know I was joking. Not about the story, she really did tell us that, but that I believed it. Apparently not.
     "We better walk to shore," I tell him.
     Of all the places to get marooned, it had to be on the northeast shore. Dead fish central. God it smelled. We wade to shore, trying to breath through our mouths which probably makes me look like a dead bloated fish, I hate breathing through my mouth, and I climb onto someone's dock.
     "Do you know who lives here?" Sam asks.
     "No, but I don't have shoes, so I'm not going to walk all the way up to the road."
     "You sure you should just sit on their dock?"
     "I'm not hurting anything. Besides, when I tell them our boat sank, we got marooned on an island inhabited with pirates and then braved the treacherous waters to come safely to land only to be shoe and homeless--perfect bait for childless gypsies--I think they'll take pity on us."
     "Unless they are gypsies."
     "Uh, no. Weren't you listening to anything I said? Gypsies can't live in cabins. They can't open doors. If they don't have a cabin, they can't have a dock. Obviously."