Author's Note: This story is extracted from my experiences, so it is mine. I am lending it to Randy because it sounds like something that would happen to him. The details like family and all that are changed to fit him, too.
When I was elementary school, before my dad died, my grandparents used to take us to Mazama, Eastern Washington State, every year for a vacation. We would stay in a cabin. There were a lot of nice cabins in the complex, each two floors and able to support eight people. Being an only child, I would get bored unless I had a cousin with me.
My cousin Darell and I used to play in the irrigation canals that ran through the back of the cabins, connecting them by an indirect route, We would race pine cones down the lazily moving water and go wading to keep cool in the desert climate. The water was clear and only came up o about our knees, but we were usually busy pretending we were Lewis and Clark, not sharks, so that didn't matter to us.
One year, there were two other children at the cabins at the same time we were there. They were maybe five or six, and at that time Darell would have been seven and I would have been ten. The little kids wanted to tag along with us where ever we went. We didn't really mind. We even let them play in the canals with us.
This turned to have been an excellent decision, because now we could use the canals behind their cabin too, making the adventure at least twice as fun. Now, being that this was four boys, we got a little exuberant in our play and wandered beyond our boundaries.
We were laying along the side of the canals, chasing a squirrel actually, when realized we had never seen this part of the monotonous desert-tree terrain before. Ah the endless fun squirrels provided... Anyway, the way we knew this was a new part of the terrain was the rope swing hanging across the canal.
It was a rope with a knot tied at the bottom for feet to sit on, and it was suspended from an iffy-looking branch of a pine tree growing beside the canal. Darell and the two little kids really wanted to swing on it.
I cautioned them against this idea, fearing the swing or the branch would break. Darell indulged me by tugging on it before he swung over. He was fine, and he did it again, whooping. He clearly found it fun and exciting.
Soon, the other two kids had swung over and were laughing from the other side, the side the cabins were on.
"Come on, Randy, it's fun!" called Darell.
I didn't know that the whole thing was a good idea, even having seen all three of my friends come trough unmarred. I was the heaviest of the bunch. I made them test it again. All three piled onto the rope and swung across twice, laughing hysterically at how much fun it was.
They had me convinced. I mean, if the rope could hold all three of them it could hold me. So I grabbed the rope and swung.
I was in the middle of the canal before I knew it, dripping wet and chest deep in the water, my pride very bruised, but otherwise unhurt. I knew the damn thing was going to kill me!
Today I look back and laugh even harder than I did then, because, damn it, I told them it was going to break on me. Even with all those safety tests, we couldn't change fate.
Now that I think about it, maybe all the tests were what weakened it...
And Captain, if you see this, I was on my lunch break.
End Note: Yes, this really did happen to me. See why I call it a study in irony? Don't answer out loud, I can't hear you, but feel free to laugh at me in a review. Or Randy...