by Bruce Collins from Warren, Michigan
A few years ago my wife and I were vacationing on the Grand Bahama Island. We took the opportunity to do a number of thinsg we had never done before. We went snorkeling, jet-skiing and – at my suggestion – parasailing.
About a dozen of us were ferried offshore to a small barge. The first person was fitted with a parachute and instructed to walk to the edge of the barge as a boat that the equipment was connected to pulled away. The boat would be up to speed as the person stepped off the barge and then he would be lifted into the air.
One thing that was immediately obvious was that the driver of the boat was a novice. It wasn’t too surprising then that things didn’t always go completely as planned. The boat wasn’t moving fast enough to lift one of the ladies up and she was dragged a few yards under water before the boat pulled her up and she became airborne. I wasn’t terribly concerned then when I too found myself being dragged through the ocean at 20 miles an hour. In those brief few moments I recognized that very shortly we’d get up to speed and I would be sailing across the sky and everything would be okay, What I hadn’t anticipated though was what would happen as the water rushed past me. Before I knew it I felt my swimming trunks being yanked down past my knees to my ankles and in the blink of an eye and they were gone.
Moments later I WAS pulled up out of the water.
And there I was, in my naked glory, for the entire Grand Bahama Island to see. It was the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to me, but my only regret is that nobody took a picture for me to show my friends.