Day of Water and Fun, 2006, by Stephanie Wharton

From MemoryArchive

Who: Stephanie Wharton
What: Day of Water and fun
When: November, 2006
Where: Iowa

Summer day in July in 2006. Hot and muggy outside with nothing to do. I ask my sister “Do you want to go swimming in the pond?” looking at the thermometer, reading ninety nine degrees outside. Jenni said “Sure.” So she walks into her room, while I walk into mine. I open the top drawer in my oak dresser. Reaching into my clothes to find my two piece bathing suit. I take out my black bathing suit and put in on. I yell to Jen “Are you ready yet?” “Yeah, almost,” She replied. Mom strictly says “You guys need to put on sunscreen.” “Yeah we know,” we said in unison. I walk into the bathroom and open the cabinet to take out the Cooperstone Sport’s sunscreen. Squeezing it so the white sunscreen comes out onto my hand. I spread it all over my body and my sister wearing her blue two piece bathing suit does the same. We walk out the door with our noodles, one orange and the other purple. Mom yelling to us “Be back in an hour an a half!”

Walking down the burning hot concrete steps onto the soft green grass. Walking barefooted down to the pond about fifty yards from the house. Watching our dog, Chance follows us down to the pond with two other cats. We finally get to the pond. The ducks quaking on the shore of the other bank. I jump over the rail of the red dock to the floating dock. I take out my pony tail so I don’t get the hair piece and my glasses wet. While the green, itchy grass burns my feet. Hurrying to jump in I decided to wait on my sister. I said to Jenni “Hurry up my feet are burning!” moving my feet all the time so they don’t burn that bad. She jumps over the rail on to the floating dock. She says “We are going to jump in on the count of three, one…two…THREE!” holding each others hands. We run to jump into the pond, also holding our noodles.

I come up from the warm water. Smelling the fishy water with my noodle near me. Jenni comes up to second later. We talk for awhile before getting out on to the dock. Up on the dock we talk about what to do. I said “I got and idea lets play this game. Ok how it works is you through out your noodle into the pond and try to sit on it when you jump in.” “Ok I will go first,” Jen says. She run and jumps in. She disappears for a few seconds and comes back up not sitting on it. So now it’s my turn to try. I run on the fake grass to jump into the water. Just missing it by a little bit and coming up, feeling this pain on my back of my legs. The water made this big red mark on them. Jenni laughs at me, while I’m thinking to myself that really hurt. I just get right back on the dock and try it again. The next time Jen and I go at the same time. I feel the warm water again and I feel the noodle under me. I’m actually on it I was thinking to myself. When I came up I was so excited. I told Jenni “Hey look Jen! I’m on the noodle,” all excited because I thought it might be impossible to do. She also made it to at the same time. “I did too,” she said excited as well. We both laugh because it was funny. We did it over and over again but in different ways.

I looked at my watch when I was on the dock one time. It said our hour an a half was over. So we start to walk towards the house. Dripping water from our body and we start to feel the hot burning sunlight on our bodies. Dropping our noodles out by the clothes line. We walk into the basement and get a towel. Walk up the stair where it leads to the kitchen to the bathroom to take a shower.