Why I would rather just sit and drink on a boat instead of do anything behind one

I'm going to tell a story. It's about me. Surprise!

Once upon a time, four country gals from Hamilton County packed their bags and headed to Destin, Florida as a graduation gift. And in the beautiful little city, they mostly just layed on the beach and chased sea gulls and got stung by a shit-ton of jelly fish and talked about guys they were dating and what they were going to do in college the next year and so on and so on.

One day, one of the girls, probably the cute little blonde one, had the amazing idea of going parasailing. Me, who is leary of lighting a gas heater, sitting too long in the garage with the car on, and little children teetering on precarious perches, declined the offer. No freaking thanks, I don't want to be strung from a rope 75,000 feet in the air behind a moving motor vehicle with nothing but The Gulf of Mexico underneath me. But to my friends, this idea sounds exciting, thrilling, nothing short of wonderful.

My stupid, stupid friends.

So, we dye my hair blonde that night and the next day head out to find some dudes wearing Bob Marley shirts who can take us parasailing.

So, just to give you an idea, this is what parasailing is meant to look like...

It did not go as anticipated.

I am strapped in the apparatus with two other gals, one of them my long time friend and the third, the ten-year-old sister of my other friend, her mother downing margaritas on the beach as she watches the horror that is soon to unfold.

We get strapped in and are hoisted into the air off the back of the boat and things are going swimmingly and it's actually quite nice. The view is beautiful and the ocean is spectacular to see from so high up. I'm having fun and have put any precautions or fears aside. Then suddenly, we hear a snap. And not just like you snapped your fingers snap, I mean a cable snap, as in one of the cables that has us suspended into the air has snapped. And it's loud. And insanely frightening. But we seem to still be safe in the air and still attached to the boat, so things seem okay. And then, without warning from our fair boat captains, we begin to lose altitude, and my friends and I are plummeted into the ocean, all the while still being pulled by the boat, which is probably going about 20 miles per hour.

This part is not fun. I immediately regret the series of events that led up to me being drug behind a boat at 20 miles per hour. And what's this? My bathing suit bottoms are coming off. And now we are being shot back up into the air. Hundreds of feet into the air. And as we are plummeted back into the water a second time and shot back into the air a second time, I come out of my harness.

The pathetic ribbon of a strap that is meant to be under my butt has naturally, during the course of water engulfing us, come out from underneath me and I am dangling from the thing, held in only by something under my armpits and the upper-arm strength of a teenage girl. Now, we are back in the air and I am literally hanging on by a thread, attempting to hoist myself back into my stirrup, all the while keeping my tiny bathing suit bottoms on, long legs kicking and swinging in the air. The ten-year-old next to me is crying and I am cursing like a sailor. My best friend is trying to help me pull myself together and Starsky and Hutch in the boat are yelling inaudible sounds at me, trying to "learn" me back into my harness, none of their advice being heard or taken into action. And why in the hell is this boat still moving?

After several failed attempts at my regaining composure and more trips back into the water, the two 'gents on board decide to put us out of our misery and (omg, here's an idea!) stop the boat, and let us drop into the water safely and pull us in manually. Apparently, the cable that snapped was the reel-them-in one and instead of just stopping immediately and ending disaster, they really wanted us to get our money's worth and strung out the horror for as long as possible.

We lived. And hopefully got our money back, I honestly have zero recollection of even boarding the boat or coming back on shore I was so shocked and angry.

You know when something tragic happens to people who are doing something they love, like that one armed girl who got attacked by a shark when she was surfing, and she still surfs? Well fuck that.

It's Free.

If you've never checked out the "free" listings on Craigslist, I highly suggest it. Not only might you happen into something you need/want, you also happen into the most ridiculous postings on the planet. Sure, it's free crap, but the best part is that people take pictures of their free crap and put it on the internet for you to look at and mock.

Now, I was once getting rid of an obese tube-like television which shut off at the most inopportune times (say, when I was trying to, I don't know, watch something) and I needed to get shed of it. But no person in their right mind would pay ten dollars for it, much less come over and pick it up, which was a two man job, so I posted it under the free section on Craigslist and added a couple of pictures, you know, for allure, and then set it out on the porch with a giant sign that said "TAKE ME" on it. It was gone within fifteen minutes.

Then there's this:

Oh good. This looks like the frame department at Goodwill.

Another time, I was moving and realized I had so much shit that I didn't know how I'd been living with all this shit until I changed houses and realized I couldn't possibly have so much shit that I didn't need and couldn't sell so I set out a huge box of the useless shit and put an ad on Craigslist, sans photo of useless looking shit, but described in the ad fairly accurately all the piss-poor stuff I had shoved into this box: a picture of a cat without a frame, one cream colored heel with no match, a spool of black satin ribbon, several homemade decorative, art-ish looking pictures, a piece of pepperoni (partially nibbled), one antique greenish mirror with two shelves to match (one broken, piece in box), and two quite useful pieces which probably deserved a Craigslist photo: an hp printer (broken, but probably fixable) and a decent but cumbersome rolling desk with a glass top.

I posted the "Box of Crap" ad on Craigslist, left the box, printer and desk by the curb with notes on them "TAKE ME," and went about my life.

2:00 AM, after work, I come home, excited to see what has been taken. Surely the best items have been taken, that desk probably didn't last long. I bet the printer is long gone, too. But lo, I come upon the scene to find every single piece of useless crap rooted through and taken out of the box, including the single shoe with no mate, and the hp printer is the only thing that remains by the curb.

Wow.

The point is, Craigslist hounds LOVE CRAP. These people sit at home all day, looking at the "free" section, driving to other people's houses, picking through their worthless crap, loving life, and then go home and re-post it, taking pictures of it in huge, indecipherable piles.

?

Free... It's free. Come and get it.

Need some free food? It's on there.

Still seaaaaled...

No? No? Comonnnnn!

Oh! And all those loose DVD's you've been trying desperately to organize but have no means to?

Finally a solution.

I'm afraid I'm funny.

The other night I was at the bar and this large Jamaican fellow was trying to hit on me and kept trying to get my number from my friends. Then he went on to tell everyone that he was allergic to water. Mistake.

"Hold the phone," I said, "you're allergic to water?"

Who the hell is allergic to water? He kept on and on trying to convince a bunch of us that this was an actual diagnosis and he was afraid of dying so he didn't drink anything but purified water and "aren't you allergic to anything, Brynnan?"

"No."

"What, and you're not afraid of anything either?"

"No."

Then I really started to think about this idea. Of being afraid of shit. One of my friends suggested I might be afraid of dying. Nope. Bring it on. Spiders? That's what flip-flops are for. Snakes? They're darling.

I have had fears of things before, but they usually kind of expire. Or I outgrow them. For a second there I was afraid of the end of the world. It was right when my niece was born and I started getting real scared of a meteor shower or complete and utter natural destruction. But, for like ten days straight, I had these End of the World Dreams, every one of which I survived. So that kind of quelled that.

Then, for a hot minute I was afraid of my car going into a river. With me in it. Then I had this really rad dream about Old Blue (God rest her soul) soaring right into Hamilton's favorite source of giant catfish slash place to dump old couches, The Leon River. And what do you know if I didn't survive that with flying colors as well. I hauled ass out of that river with my red HHS Cheerleading bag and called my Dad on the river and told him what happened and he said, "Well! Get home!" So I did.

Lately, I have this fear that a tree nearby has just been struck by lightning and fallen on a wire that is tied to a clock and my sports car can't get up to 88 miles per hour and I can't get out of 1985.

I do not know what to do about this fear. Hopefully, some dream sequence will take care of it soon because I can't stand wearing red down-feather vests and dealing with overgrown morons named Biff.

Now I just have to do something about the fear of The Beastie Boys putting out yet another album.