... where family is the source of humor!

Family Fishing Trip by LaVonis Miracle

Nothing is worse, to a parent or a child, is when boredom strikes during a family vacation. What is a young child to do while on a fishing trip but missing her daily doses of Gilligan's Island? Develop a humorous memory to share years later naturally!

When I was growing up my father always wanted to make sure that our family vacations were both fun and educational in some way. My father was a teacher and he believed his classroom was anywhere he was.

One summer when I was six years old, my father decided that he would take my mother, my older sister and I on a weekend trip to the lake. He had rented a small houseboat out on Norris Lake in Tennessee and there we were to spend a glorious weekend experiencing the great outdoors while learning the newest techniques that Dad had learned on the Bill Dance Fishing Show. It might be important to add here that my Mother was not at all the outdoors type and my sister had much the same feelings on the subject. I, on the other hand, being only six years old, had only experienced the outdoors in my backyard and I seemed fine with it as long as I could go in and watch Gilligan's Island at 4:30.

On Friday, my mother packed up our bags, which seemed to be almost everything we owned, and we were off in our Gold 1969 Impala. When we arrived at the boat dock I spanned the water slowly with amazement. The lake seemed like an endless body of water. I was fascinated by the boats traveling back and forth. The houseboats seemed so silent as they gently floated with the waves of passing boats. I should probably mention that Mom was afraid of water. Daddy thought that this lake trip would do Mom a little good. She would see that the water was "her friend", not something to be so terribly frightened of.

We got in a small motor boat and began our journey across the lake to our floating weekend adventure home. As we approached the houseboat Daddy slowed the motor down. I looked around and there wasn't anything in sight except water, the woods, and an occasional passing boat. It was somewhat overwhelming at first, but Daddy was so enthused about the whole thing that none of us wanted to burst his bubble.

As I started getting out of the boat everything began to jiggle under my feet. I held on for dear life until I was firmly on the back porch of the houseboat. I walked inside and looked around. There were two rooms. One was a small kitchen and the other was a bedroom with two full sized beds. Everything was very old. The bedposts were made of wrought iron. The mattresses looked different than the ones at home. I crawled up on one of the beds and began to slowly sink. I lay down in the middle of the bed and had the strange sensation that I was being swallowed by the mattress. It was sort of like being in a marshmallow. I lay there enjoying the moment when I heard my mother calling for me in a nervous tone. I had sort of disappeared into the mattress and mom was afraid I had wondered out on the front porch and fallen in.

"Here I am Mommy," I called in a muffled voice from the giant feather mattress. A few minutes later my sister joined me and there we stayed until Mom fixed us something to eat.

Everything was running fairly smooth for me until it was time for Gilligan's Island and I discovered there was no television. I was ready to go home.

We went to bed early that night and arose the next morning for our grand fishing excursion. It was very chilly on the lake. Mom was bundling us up and getting our life jackets on. She soon made the discovery of something she had forgotten to pack. She had forgotten our headscarves. My sister and I were very prone to ear infections and Mom was always covering our heads up to keep any air from getting in our ears. Mom would not let us get on the boat without something to cover our heads. Daddy was beginning to get impatient. Finally Mom thought of the perfect hat. She went to the suitcase and pulled out two pairs of panties. One was mine and the other was my sister's. Surely Mom was not going to make us put underwear on our heads! She handed me mine, which was the kind that had ruffles on the rear-end side. My sister and I slowly capped them over our heads. Mom was happy and Dad, in his zest for life, did not even seem to notice that my sister and I were wearing our underwear on top of our heads.

We loaded the boat and off we went. I sat staring straight at my sister and her at me. Hair was poking out the leg holes in our panties and waving in a strange medusa-like way. Daddy was driving around looking for the perfect fishing spot when my sister seemed to develop a suspicious itch on her head. I watched her closely and while Mom and Dad weren't looking, she flung her panties off of her head and out into the lake! Of course it was just an accident. She was only scratching her head and it slipped. I then wanted to take off my panty hat but Mom would not hear of it. There I sat with arms crossed, my lip stuck out, and a ruffled panty hat.

I sat there as long as I could before finally grabbing the panties and hurling them as far as I could over the side of the boat. There we all sat for awhile, silently watching as the two pair of panties floated farther and farther away.

We did manage to catch a few fish and salvage the rest of the afternoon. Daddy tied the fish on to the back porch post of the house boat and ever so often I would go out and pull the line up to see if they were still attached. I pretended they were my "pet fish" that were tied up like a dog on a chain.

On Sunday morning we got up, loaded ourselves in the boat, and back across the lake we went (no panties on our heads).

It would be a long time before Daddy would mention another fishing trip. We stuck to the historical places and amusement parks for awhile.

I love to think of those trips and remember the fun we all had. Daddy had a way of making the simplest trip into a grand adventure. He wanted to teach my sister and me as much as he could on our little vacations. I think what he taught us most of all, without even realizing it, was the ability to find laughter and humor in almost any situation. That lesson, I can say without hesitation, has come in handy throughout the years.

Humorous Book Recommendations:             [ view all ]
Whose Panties are These? More Misadventures from Funny Women on the Road
[Jennifer L. Leo; 232 pages]
The best travel stories often hatch when things go completely wrong, and this second title in a series of women's travel humor capitalizes on that phenomenon with more sidesplitting stories of female misadventure around the world. Can you relate?

There are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child. There are seven million.
-- Walt Streightiff

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