Suggestion: Flotation Devices

(This entry was written stream of consciousness with no editing and was based on a suggestion from the "audience.")

When I was a kid if you wanted to ride in the boat or even get in the lake you had to have a life preserver. The moment I turned 12 years old it became my new responsibility to get these flotation devices for myself and the younger children... I was proud to have grown into this new responsibility and walked with great enthusiasm to the storage shed at the top of the hill to gather 6 belts and share them with the masses. What I did not know yet was what utter horror would face me on the other side of the shed door. As I swung the aluminum hinged portal open, pulled the light and stepped through the threshold my face was met with the largest hornets nest I have ever seen. I don't know if you've ever gotten a good look right at a hornet emerging from a giant nest, but it shook me to my very bones.

I screamed... it was a girlie scream and it was long and it was loud and it lasted all the way down the hill and to the lake and into the water for safety...

The children who had been waiting for their vests ran after me, all with their own little screams and all heading toward the same water... as I surfaced from the water and saw their short little legs running down the hill and the hornets hovering above I was met with a very life and death based problem... Those kids were all about to jump into the water without vests on which was my new responsibility... but if they didn't jump in they were probably going to get stung (at least one of them flailing about like that was going to get stung... you just know it) and so, I did what anyone in my situation would do... I spread my body out and tried to collect as many tiny people as possible on my arms and legs. This did 2 things... It got them into the water but not enough to submerge themselves to evade the hornets and it showed me that holding 5 little children with your arms and legs will very effectively sink you to the bottom of the water and they will panic and they will not let you up for air.

And so... Nobody got stung. Nobody drowned. Nobody got in trouble.

My Grandfather grabbed a can of wd40 or something of the like and without fear or trepidation, he killed all dem hornets dead where they nested...

~Jim