MERMAIDS

Back when I was a kid, us boys had a sayin’; “It’s easier to get forgiven, than it is to get permission.” Now, moms didn’t really go for this philosophy, but moms didn’t really go for much of anything back then. My mom was a little more tolerant than other moms, because she had grown up with three older brothers, and one younger one, so she knew how boys were. Oh yeah, she had an older sister too, but we’re talkin’ about boys here, so Aunt Peggy doesn’t count.

Now, most moms are a little “wordy” with answers to questions boys ask them. In fact, most are not answers at all, they are just more questions. Here are a few examples.  

Question: “Momma, can I go fishin’?”

Answer:  “Well, it depends. Where are you going? Who are you going with? Will there be any adults there?”

Question:  “Momma, can I have a Coke?”

Answer:  “Do you really think you should be drinking Cokes? Wouldn’t you really rather have a glass of orange juice?”

Question:  “Momma, can I go to the show?”

Answer:  “What show? What is it rated? Who are you going with?”

All three of these could have been answered either yes or no, but moms cannot answer questions that way. I think it may be in their genes or somethin’.  

I remember once when my son Ray asked me a question. I didn’t know the answer, so I told him to go ask his momma. He looked down, kicked the dirt a couple of times and said, “That’s okay, Dad. I really didn’t want to know that much about it.”

Anywho, that’s why it was so hard to ask permission back when I was a kid. You always got the third degree, and they didn’t read you your Miranda Rights back then. Heck, if you had asked for permission for everything you did, you’d never have gotten to do anything.

Once, my buddy Greg Hunt and I decided to ride our horses to an old lake that we knew about. It was called Shangri la. It was about a 20 acre lake and gettin’ to it took a little time. It was a few miles from our houses, and was in the middle of the woods. It had an old dirt road that wound down to it, and was a pretty popular spot for older kids to go parkin’.  

It was a beautiful lake, and we liked to go there and swim and fish. We’d take our goggles, snorkel, and a little three-pronged spear we had rigged up to spear fish. Now, we didn’t swim around chasin’ fish down to spear them. That would have involved too much work. We were smarter than that. We would roll up little bitty balls of bread and stick them on the end of the spear tips, and lie on our bellies in the shallow water, and when the fish came up to nibble on the bread, we’d spear them. Since we had the snorkels we never had to come up for air.  We had a ball.

Now, if either one of us had told our moms what we were gonna do, do you think they would have let us? Maybe? Maybe not. Well, I don’t know about you, but a 50/50 chance ain’t good enough for me, so we just told them we were just goin’ to ride our horses.

Well, like I said, it was a few miles from the house, and it took us a while to get to the lake. We had procured a couple of cigars from Mr. Parker’s stash and were ridin’ and puffin’. Mr. Parker was Debbie Parker’s dad, and he smoked these big green cigars. We had “borrowed” some when we had been over at his house a few days before. We had thought about askin’ him for a couple, but like I said, it’s easier to get forgiven than permission.

Anywho, we were ridin’ and puffin’ along, not far from the lake, when both of our horses raised their heads up suddenly. Anybody who knows horses, or watched enough cowboy shows on TV knows that when a horse’s head goes up, it hears somethin’.

“What is it, Stoney?” I asked my horse. Stoney didn’t say anything. He never did. Roy Roger’s horse Trigger would whinny, or stomp his foot, or somethin', but not Stoney. I think he was a mute.  

“I hear somethin’ too,” said Greg.

We dismounted and tied the horses up to a bush, and started creepin’ up to where we heard the noise. It was comin’ from the lake.

Now at this lake, it had a little beach type area and this is where we would do our fish spearin’, and it was this area from which the noise was comin’. We crept forward, and hid behind a pile of dirt about fifty yards from the beach. We were bein’ careful because back then there were teenage boys that were called “hoodlums”. These were guys that wore tee shirts with a package of cigarettes rolled up in one of its sleeves, and duck-tail hairdos, and they liked to pick on little kids for some reason.

We crawled up and looked over the pile of dirt.  Stickin’ out of the water were the heads of four teenage girls.  

“What are they doin’?” I asked Greg.

“Don’t know. Swimmin’ I guess,” he answered.

“Well, I wish they’d hurry up and git out of here.”

About that time, one of the girls stood up. Greg and I looked at her, looked back at each other, and then looked back at the girl. Greg grabbed my arm. “She’s nekked!” he exclaimed in a loud whisper.

“Man!” was the only word I could get out of my mouth. Then another one stood up.

“I’m tellin’ ya,” Greg said. “Them girls is nekked!”

“Them ain’t girls,” I said. “Them’s women.”

Our eyeballs were dryin’ out because we didn’t want to blink and miss somethin’. Finally, I looked over at Greg. His goggles were pulled up on top of his head, and he was puffin’ on that cigar so fast, it’d done flamed up on him.

“Watch your stogie, Bub,” I said. He pulled it out of his mouth, blew out the flame, and looked at me. 

“Are you believin’ this?”

“Heck, I figure I’m fixin’ to wake up any moment and find out it was all a dream. But what a dream.”

Finally, they all got out, dried off, put on their clothes, climbed into their car, and left. Greg and I were still starin’ at the water for probably an hour after they left. We hadn’t moved or said anything.

“I don’t know about you,” I finally said, “but I think we ought to come up here spear fishin’ more often.”

“Are you kiddin’ me,” he replied.  “I don’t think I ever want to go home. This was the greatest day of my life.”

Although we spent every day we could back up at that little lake, we never again saw those girls.  

Now you know why, even today, I’m hesitant to ask permission. Heh, heh.

 

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