Know Your Walrus - Week 4 - Your Most Significant Childhood Memory

August 13, 2012 - Know Your Walrus - Week 4 - Your Most Significant Childhood Memory

Wow, my most significant childhood memory.  That conjures up all kinds of different scenarios; good memories, bad memories, traumatic events, tragedies, etc.  I could come up with one for any of those.  The memory that I'm going to pick involves a moment of personal triumph and ingenuity born out of complete stupidity.

My dad's uncle owned a cottage on a lake in Michigan called Ackerson Lake.  As far as lakes go it isn't huge, but the fishing is good and it size is capable of sustaining leisure activities such as water skiing, tubing, etc.  Occasionally my family would have an opportunity to visit the cottage and be able to enjoy what it had to offer.  One of the big things that sticks out in my mind is that there were eight boats.  There was a ski boat, a pontoon party boat, a bass boat, a pedal boat, several rowboats with or without outboard motors and a few canoes.  The cottage wasn't huge so it always seemed excessive to me that there would be eight boats for four people (because usually is was just Mom, Dad, Sarah, and me).  

So I don't remember the exact occasion, but at some point my dad and I went up to Ackerson Lake for a father/son weekend.  It might have been spring break, it might have just been a weekend during the summer. Like I said, I don't really remember what the occasion was but I do know that it was early in the season and in fact it was way too cold to swim in the lake.  I was somewhere in the middle school age range 6th/7th/8th grade.  Anyway the last couple of times we'd been up there my dad had started letting me take out a rowboat with an outboard motor onto the lake all by myself.  I remember vividly my disbelief that dad was going to let me go out on the lake unsupervised. I'd usually bring some fishing gear with me and throw that in the boat but by the time I got in control of something with a motor I kind of got tunnel vision. I was so enamored with the thought of being under my own power with a motorized vehicle that I wouldn't ever end up fishing and I'd just cruise around the lake with that tiny 10HP Evinrude motor.

Well I must have done something dramatic or impressive to earn my dad's trust or maybe it was just because mom wasn't around, but on this trip he decided that he'd let me take the bass boat out all by myself.  Imagine my complete shock and amazement.  I was going to get to take out a boat with a steering wheel all by my lonesome.  I couldn't have been any more excited.  As I recall, I took the boat out a few times without incident and just had a really enjoyable time cruising the lake much faster than I was used to.

It was shortly after breakfast one day and I was really itching to get out on the lake and drive the bass boat around.  Dad was moving kind of sluggishly so I think he was happy to let me go out and do something that'd keep me out of his hair.  So I grabbed the key to the boat and off I went down to the dock.  I got the motor warmed up, unmoored the boat and was out on the water in about 10 minutes flat.  I headed straight out to the middle of the lake and started driving in circles.  After about 10-15 minutes of super fun boating the motor started to cough and sputter and then nothing.  It was dead.  Well it turns out that in my haste to leave that morning I forgot to check the fuel level on the gas tank.  I was completely out of fuel.

I had no idea what to do. So here I am in middle school stranded in the middle of a lake on a boat with no way of communicating with anybody.  The first thing I tried was paddling with the one oar that was on the boat, but since the bass boat was so wide I just ended up going in circles.  The one thing that hadn't dawned on me was that there was a trolling motor on the front of the boat.  As I said earlier, it must've been early in the boating season because it wasn't hooked up, but the battery was on board.  Mind you, I'd never used a trolling motor before and had no idea how to hook it up but I figured "Hey how hard can this be?"  So this motor had a foot pedal for for steering and throttle.  The pedal was hooked up to the motor, but not the battery.  I had no tools or way to fasten the cables so I took the red cable and touched it to the red post and the the black cable to the black post.  Since I didn't have any way to fasten the cables, I just stepped on them with my foot to hold them in place.  Then, using my hand I manipulated the throttle and steering pedal and got myself pointed in the right direction.  After about an hour I finally made it back to the dock.

I went up to the cottage and let dad know what had happened and he said he'd been sitting and watching me from the bay window the whole time.  He wanted to see if I could figure it out myself.

This experience was such a huge confidence booster for me.  It let me know that I could be put in a crisis situation, analyze my surroundings and come up with a solution to my problem.  I'm so grateful to my dad for NOT coming out and rescuing me.  It was one of those moments that made me feel smart beyond my years.  When I think back on it, it wasn't really that monumental of a deal that I figured out a solution but it's still one of those things that I carry with me as a big lifetime triumph.