Without a Trace

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We had a good laugh over this tonight. M thought it the funniest thing she'd seen a LONG time. I'm not exactly sure WHY this is funny, but it is. It reminds me of a story from about 9 1/2 years ago.

I was pregnant with M (about 7 months along), and hubby and I, plus our two oldest, and only at the time, boys, M & E, went on a walk in the woods. M was about 15 and E was about 9. It was October, and not too cold, but cool, so we all had jackets on. We went on a different path than we'd ever taken before, so we didn't know what was ahead of us. We came to a small stream that had a log "bridge" spanning it. I wasn't too sure that I myself wanted to try to cross it, but the boys saw an adventure in the making, so M took off over the log to the other side. For some reason, he stopped on the log, right at the edge of the other side, and E had already started across. He was in more of a hurry than M to actually set foot on solid ground on the other side, so he hopped off the log onto the ground near the edge, which was covered in leaves.

Only it wasn't just leaves.

That "tiny" little stream swallowed my son whole, in the blink of an eye. Seriously, he vanished under the water without even making a ripple. I distinctly remember standing there dumbfounded saying "Oh my God". Not screaming, not really panicking or anything, just awestruck at what had just happened. One second he was traipsing across the log, the very next, gone without a trace. I truly thought aliens had just come down and plucked my first born from the planet. He was gone. I pondered jumping in after him, and was seriously just about to, when his head popped up. He came up laughing, which obviously was a HUGE relief. M helped him out on the other side, and we all just collapsed in laughter. He was, ahem, surprised that he hadn't jumped onto actual solid ground, but other than that, he thought the whole thing was pretty funny. Since it wasn't too cold, and he was, of course, soaking wet, we weren't worried about him freezing or anything, but we did turn around and head home after that, recounting the whole thing from all our various vantage points.

To this day, it is one of the funniest things I have ever seen. I KNOW I could have won $100k on "America's Funniest Home Videos" had I had the foresight to bring a video camera. Of crouse, it's only funny because he was okay, but hindsight's 20/20, right?

Sort of like the poor little kitty above. He was told he could walk on top of that snow, and damned if he didn't sink straight down.