When I was living in New Mexico, my brother came down from Colorado for a visit. He had heard that Springer Lake had a good population of northern pike, so naturally we decided to go fishing.
I had a little twelve-foot aluminum boat that, as it happened, I had originally bought from him. We hauled it up to Springer Lake, launched it, and headed out.
At some point we were sitting out in the middle of the lake when my brother stood up.
I should probably mention that he had already knocked back a number of beers, as was his wont.
When he went to sit back down, he lost his balance just a little. Instinctively, he grabbed the side of the boat.
This turned out to be a very bad idea.
The boat tilted nearly ninety degrees.
Water came pouring over the side.
Somehow, we didn’t completely capsize. Instead, the boat righted itself—with us still in it—but now it was almost completely full of water.
For a moment, neither of us moved.
Actually, for quite a while neither of us moved.
The boat was so full of water that it had almost no stability. Any significant movement threatened to roll it over completely.
So there we sat, practically frozen, in the middle of Springer Lake.
We had fishing gear with us. We had the motor. We had the boat itself. And both of us were thinking essentially the same thing:
We may be about to lose all of this and have to swim for shore.
Eventually it became apparent that sitting there forever wasn’t going to solve the problem.
We needed to bail.
There wasn’t exactly a bucket handy.
So I very carefully took off one of my shoes.
And started bailing.
One shoe-full at a time.
My brother did the same.
It was a painfully slow process. I have no idea how long we sat there dipping our shoes into Springer Lake—which, by this point, was largely inside our boat—and pouring it back outside.
But gradually the water level dropped.
Eventually we got enough out that the boat began to regain some stability. Now we could move without feeling that every motion might dump us into the lake.
At that point I could finally start the motor.
Once we were moving, I pulled the drain plug and let the remaining water run out through the back of the boat.
And just like that, we had a boat again instead of a twelve-foot aluminum bathtub.
Whew.
At the time, of course, it wasn’t particularly funny. For a while there, we genuinely thought we might lose the boat and all our gear and end up swimming for shore.
But when I think back on it now, that’s not what I feel.
I picture my brother and me sitting motionless in a boat almost completely filled with water…
then very carefully removing our shoes…
and bailing out Springer Lake.
What I feel most is humor.
This happened to me.