She looked at me with a skeptical look on her face and asked, “really?”. I replied, “sure, I read it on a sign when we came in.” After a moments hesitation, my Mom tapped out a sequence on the side of the whirlpool with her hand, tap, tap-tap-tap, tap. Meanwhile, I had my hand underwater and behind her and recreated this sequence by covering and uncovering the water jet behind her with my hand. “Oh my god, to is so cool!” my Mom exclaimed with all the excitement of a five-year-old on Christmas morning. She then proceeded to tap out a new sequence and “magically” the water jet behind her had now begun pulsing with the new rhythm. On the other side of my Mom, my younger sister was now tapping out a sequence of her own. After several frantic attempts she concluded, that her water jet must be “broken” because it just didn't pulsate. Not wanting her daughter to miss out on this incredible experience, my Mom offered her spot to my sister and the joke was exposed. It wouldn't have lasted much longer anyways, because my Dad was sitting across from us and had been watching the whole thing unfold and wouldn't have been able to contain his laughter a second longer. This is one of my Dad's favorite stories and at parties he'll say to me “tell the story about how you fooled your Mom when you were just a kid”.

Remember, I was a novice sailor at the time and had never heard of, let alone done, a man

overboard drill.

"Oh S*%t", I thought "Here we go", jamming the tiller hard over to turn the boat around. the

boom smacked over with a huge crack, just missing my eldest son, which would have surely

knocked him in the water too. Needless to say, this threw him into a panic attack.

Now we had two screaming kids, batman adrift in a pringles can, and the boat going nowhere.

The wind was right on the bow. We got the boat going again but it took three passes and about

twenty minutes of kids screaming and the wife telling me I was going the wrong way (You can

never get a sailboat to to in the direction you want) before we finally retreived the

precious pringles can.

The kids finally settled down and I think I was a hero for maybe a few weeks, or was it

minutes?

Moral of the story?-   Educate yourself before venturing into new activities, Like boating,

skydiving, or Weblo. and always wear a life jacket.